Real reason Igbos overwhelmingly voted for Peter Obi – Farooq Kperogi

Media scholar, Farooq Kperogi, on Saturday said many voters of Igbo extraction overwhelmingly voted for Peter Obi, the presidential candiate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023 election, “because of the novelty and unprecedentedness of his candidacy”.

TrackNews reports that writing his weekly column, Kperogi praised Obi for being “the first and only Igbo presidential candidate in Nigeria’s history whose acceptance transcended the narrow confines of his ethnic cocoon”.

“The excessive, even exclusionary, emotional investment in Peter Obi’s candidacy among Igbo voters isn’t necessarily the consequence of what Nigerians have called “tribalism.” It’s because of the novelty and unprecedentedness of his candidacy,” Kperogi wrote.

“Peter Obi is the first and only Igbo presidential candidate in Nigeria’s history whose acceptance transcended the narrow confines of his ethnic cocoon. Not even the great Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe came remotely close to Obi’s relatively wide pan-Nigerian appeal.

“Obi is the first Igbo politician to dilute the historic suspicion and animosity that southern ethnic minorities used to harbor against Igbo politicians (which started after Azikiwe displaced Professor Eyo Ita—from what is now Cross River State— as Head of Government Business of Eastern Nigeria after he lost out to Chief Obafemi Awolowo in Western Nigeria).

“Similarly, although northern Christians led the prosecution of the Nigerian Civil War against the Biafra secession, which has created an abiding, if progressively diminishing, distrust between the Igbo people and northern Christians, Obi is wildly popular among northern Christians. Not even Azikiwe who chose Professor Ishaya Audu, a northern Christian, as his running mate two times in 1979 and 1983 had a fraction of the support of northern Christians that Obi has.

“Plus, many Yoruba people who define their identities in Christian terms, or who despise Bola Tinubu for any number of reasons, and who resented the prospect of a transition of power from Buhari to Atiku supported and campaigned for Obi.

“Sure, the defining imperative for Obi’s support was Christianity (which indicates that should a Christian candidate emerge from either of the major political parties next time, Obi won’t be as popular among Christians as he is now), but it was reasonably pan-regional, certainly more pan-regional than the support any Igbo politician has ever had. It would be unreasonable to expect Igbo people to not rally around such a politician. If other people accept him, what reason do they have to reject him?”