Dr. Ononuju, contributing analyst to the platforms of USAfricaLive.com, is a political strategy adviser.
If Peter Obi runs as a vice presidential candidate in Nigeria’s 2027 election our movement will be demoralized and many won’t back him.
Also, I think that should such a ticket win, Obi who contested as the presidential flagbearer of the Labour Party of Nigeria in the 2023 election will be degraded as other vice Presidents. No Nigerian has ever survived or excelled in the treacherous position of the vice presidency since the inception of the country’s democracy. It is, politically, an abattoir.
Tell me of any Nigerian who survived the inevitable degradation during and schortly after serving as a vice President .
President Tinubu’s VP Shettima’s current woes are nothing compared to the experience of his predecessor, VP Yemi Osinbajo who served with the recently late President Muhammadu Buhari. We all know about those who came before them — such as VP Atiku Abubakar (who served with President Olusegun Obasanjo.
We need to interrogate reasons they all ended up humiliated during their service as vice presidents? We need to ask, critically, why does the system allow their being marginalized and treated shabbily? Are there other factors and issues?
I believe that the Nigerian system is designed to achieve such outcomes as the “President’s Men”starting from the Chief of Staff would appropriate the powers of the vice president and the rest become history.
It is worse when an 80 years old president is surrounded by a cabal of his own people.
How could we not look at the history of vice presidents in Nigeria and ask what will be the fate of former Governor Obi — after serving as a Vice to Atiku .
The other issue is how would Tinubu not repeat the examples learned from Buhari without any real electoral reforms to make electronic transmission a mandatory law.
Any strategy by any group that does not have a strong response to the rampaging APC-INEC- JUDICIARY connivance is dead on arrival.
It won’t be fair that we allow the most likely diminution and decimation of Peter Obi just to help a gerontocrat become President at 80+ years.
