What is Peter Obi looking for in Yelwata? By Rotimi Fasan

Now that he has been given a fresh invite by so-called elders of the community to visit after last week’s botched attempt, I think it is legitimate to ask what Peter Obi, the National Democratic Congress’s presidential candidate, is looking for in Yelwata, a somnolent town in Benue State, at a time when he should be campaigning for the mandate of Nigerians in the January 16, 2027 presidential election? The lacklustre nature of the campaigns was the subject of this column last week. Then I wrote about the apparent indifference of the presidential candidates to the election campaigns, unlike the case in the 2023 election.

If President Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress—a party with a vast network of structures and which could count on the support of 31 state governors across party lines—if that party’s candidate could choose to take three weeks off on what his minders have called a working vacation to Europe, does that give candidates of the other parties the licence to waste their time on idle activities, knowing how much they still have to do to begin to be seen as measuring up to the ruling party? These are leaders of political parties that are too quick to accuse the ruling party and, indeed, the president of constricting the democratic space. Even though there are nearly two dozen political parties registered for the 2027 election, leading opposition parties’ leaders have constantly accused the president of distracting them with hostile actors planted in these parties to foment trouble while pushing the country into a one-party state.

But now that they have the opportunity to push their agenda through well-coordinated campaigns, they have left substance to chase shadows. Each week, a new outrage is manufactured. Last week it was the news of Peter Obi being barred from visiting Yelwata. That was framed as an attack, which Obi and his followers promoted, even when there was no assault of any kind. This week, it is the distraction of his wife’s multimillion-naira Hermes, a N245 million blot on the conscience of a moral crusader’s wife. That amount of money could well take the IDPs Obi purported to visit out of the camps and have them resettled in their homes. But this master of subterfuge and self-claimed possessor of one wristwatch and one black shoe would not see this. What, for goodness’ sake, could Peter Obi be doing on the road to Yelwata when he has the onerous task of making his case for the presidency to Nigerians?

Why would he engage in the distraction of visiting an IDP camp at a time when he had the opportunity to put his waning electoral strength and relevance on an even keel? Is it because Peter Obi is so politically naïve that he does not recognise the enormity of the task ahead of him? Of course not. Obi knows exactly what he is doing. He is not so obtuse at the game as not to know he should be neck- and head-deep in the campaigns. He has no agenda for Nigeria. Would a man with a plan for the country be seen at the campaign event of a rival, selling the candidacy of that rival, as he did for Seyi Makinde, the presidential candidate of the Allied Peoples Party, during the inauguration of their campaign office? Which serious politician does that? Is this what they do in Bangladesh? Did he see Prime Minister Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh National Party campaign for the candidate of the opposition Bangladesh Awami League? No! But as Datti Baba-Ahmed, his running mate in the 2023 election, has said to clarify why he had to leave Obi (Obi did not drop him as his running mate, he said) to his shenanigans while he sought his electoral fortune elsewhere, Peter Obi has no plan for Nigeria.

That is not a new insight, however shocking it may sound coming from the former running mate of the man in question. It is something anyone who understands Peter Obi’s kind of politics, or what he represents as a politician, knows too well. The man simply has no plan for Nigeria beyond the weight of his campaign rhetoric. He is the product and hostage of a separatist formation with fascist tendencies that comes straight out of a hate-filled strain of Igbo nationalism. He is, at best, a political drifter who suddenly found himself at the centre of national attention he neither worked for nor prepared for, due to a convergence of freak occurrences during the 2023 election cycle. He lacks the political awareness to see himself as a historic figure who has been providentially placed to be in the vanguard of an incipient demographic that could change the political direction of the country. This, even if he did not prepare for it. But he frittered away the opportunity and took solace in divisive politics.

The Peter Obi 2027 campaign lacks the unanticipated gravitas of its 2023 predecessor. It is a flotilla caught in an ocean of icebergs and is headed for nowhere. Outside its south-east enclave, it has no prospects, and Peter Obi, the supposed helmsman, knows this. Which is why he would abandon the campaign trail and make a beeline to an IDP camp in far-flung Yelwata. The man knows the game he is playing. Going to an IDP camp at this moment is part of his sleight of hand—a major aspect of his divisive politics through which his supporters push his narrative of Igbo victimisation. He is a demagogue who knows how to trigger his opponents, as his trip to Yelwata was bound to do. For want of a better strategy, Obi turns everything into politics. The horrible massacre in Yelwata occurred in June 2025, and Obi waited for more than a year for the campaigns to begin before choosing to go there on a campaign mission (where he doles out a few millions, typically about N10 million, where others give far more), which he disguises as a humanitarian visit.

At the end of the visit, he drops a few broadsides against the government for failure to provide security and ensure the welfare of the people, while blaming the ruling party for the condition in which the people have found themselves; rounding up with his signature line—‘A New Nigeria is Possible’. Doing any of this at this time is not even a subtle attempt at campaigning. It is riling the people up for electoral revolt. Peter Obi is a coward of a politician who, rather than confront his opponents on the field, would go behind them to stir revolt in their backyard. He should drop his worn strategy of self-victimisation and milking of both the real and often fabricated grievances of his people.

If you’d like, I can also produce a version that tightens syntax and improves flow without changing your argument or voice.

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