Did Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed Know That Peter Obi Was Waging A ”Religious War”?

By Prof Pita Agbese

I am thoroughly embarrassed for the Obidients. While they were paying obeisance to a make-believe Peter Obi, the real Peter Obi emerged in the leaked phone conversation between him and Bishop Oyedepo. That Obi intoning, “Yes Daddy” to almost everything  Oyedepo said to him was not the man canonized by the Obidients as a saint. The fictional Obi was a super-patriot in the vanguard of a supposed mission to build a “better Nigeria.” The Obi on the tape was the real Obi: craven, ethnically and religiously-bigoted, conniving, manipulative, opportunistic, and duplicitous. 

The Obi of the Obidients is far from the “yes, Daddy” Obi. Some of us knew that and said so during the presidential campaign, but like people who just fell in love, the Obidients chose to believe in fantasies. The Obi that Obi had sold to them was too alluring to be discarded. Even with reality now staring them in their Obi star-struck faces, some of them still feel more comfortable with the Obi of their fantasies. “Oh, the taped conversation was a con job by the APC,” they cried. “Oh, Buhari said worst things,” they whimpered. “Oh, Obi was merely seeking support from wherever he could get it,” they claimed. 

Well, the answer is none of the above. Obi’s voice on the tape was unmistakable. Obi’s speech pattern on the tape could not have been cloned even with Artificial Intelligence (AI). What the tape revealed of Obi was devastating. The Obi proclaiming the election a ‘religious war” was worse than the Obi that I thought was hiding behind the “better Nigeria” mantra. The Obi on the tape would not have built a better Nigeria. That Obi sees Nigeria as a Manichaean place of religious struggles between Islam and Christianity. If Obi had been elected, he would have been an active participant in the “war,” fighting on the side of Christianity. Obi promised Oyedepo that “they would not regret supporting” him. The “better Nigeria” that Obi was going to build would have been a place shouldering from the conflagrations of a “religious war.” Did Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed know about this when he accepted to be Obi’s running-mate or did Obi have him fooled as he had fooled the other Obidients? Scary!