DELE ALAKE FROM THISDAY
Nothing captures and portrays the crisis of credibility and integrity of the vast majority of a sectional intelligentsia than a recent piece by Dr Chidi Amuta titled ‘Peter Obi and the looming tyranny’. To some who thought Chidi was supposedly more cosmopolitan, liberal, less parochial and less paranoid, his vituperation is more revealing than concealing.
In the absurd and falsely alarmist apocalyptic piece, Amuta squanders valuable time and needless words lamenting an imminent tyranny of the incoming All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, which is entirely a figment of his fertile imagination. What a not insignificant number of Nigerians are bothered about today is not an alleged imminent or looming tyranny by an incoming administration that is only a matter of reckless conjecture but a fully blown intolerant, arrogant, abusive, toxic and insulting Obidients’ (Obidiots?) dictatorship that is already thriving in our midst. Anyone who has dared express any view critical of or opposed to that of Mr. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 elections, is immediately set upon by the unwieldy column of wild dogs who have labeled themselves ’Obidients’ and constitute a lawless mob baying for blood on social media !
It does not matter how eminent and revered the personality under attack is or how logically incontrovertible his or her submission is, the Obi horde spares no effort and eschew no epithet or expletive, no matter how repulsive, to shred their reputations to pieces and tarnish images carefully nurtured over decades .Most of the time the only offense of those who come under the ferocious and feral attacks of the Obidient mob is that they exercise their democratic right to disagree politically with a Peter Obi whose rabid supporters have come to see, portray and worship as infallible deity.
Now, tyranny or dictatorship is normally associated with those individuals, cliques or groups who utilize their control of state and governmental powers to harass, intimidate, oppress and suppress opposition and dissent. They are the proponents and practitioners of the one-dimensional narrative in society who can hardly tolerate alternative viewpoints and narratives. Pray, many have asked, if a group without control of and influence over state power like the Peter Obi clique, is so ferociously against the expression of a multiplicity of viewpoints now, what grave danger of descent to absolutism would Nigeria have faced had their man won the presidency?
That is the dangerous possibility that should bother Chidi Amuta’s mind and not his far-fetched and implausible rumination on a possible looming APC tyranny.Like I said, many members of this sectional intelligentsia like Amuta find themselves walking an uncomfortable tight rope especially when it comes to dealing with the sinister menace that groups like the ‘Obidients’ have come to pose to society.
