By Iyeneabasi Mercy Etim
If you look closely at his entire political history, it is easy to spot a recurring theme: any idea or policy that allows Nigerians to starve, puts the masses at a disadvantage, or leaves the vast majority of the population utterly vulnerable is exactly the kind of policy that makes Peter Obi joyful and at peace.
The latest is him instigating Nigerians in the diaspora to stop sending money home to their parents and struggling family members. The brilliant strategy here? Starve them into submission and punish them until he gets elected.
Let’s not pretend this is a novel idea; if you paid any attention in 2022, this exact cruel narrative was pushed heavily by some of his most aggressive supporters. Back then, Obi put on his usual saintly act and pretended it wasn’t his idea. But recently, the mask is beginning to crack, and he is making the mistake of saying the quiet part out loud. He knows full well that millions of Nigerians rely on diaspora remittances just to eat, but hey, starving the people to force a political collapse has always been his underlying strategy.
This is the exact same script he used when he loudly defended Godwin Emefiele’s disastrous Naira redesign. Never mind that the cash crunch was causing untold hardship, forcing businesses to collapse, and literally causing starvation and death across the country. To Obi, the severe suffering of the masses was just a necessary sacrifice for his political calculations.
It’s the same logic behind his relentless demand for the unconditional release of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu. He happily campaigns for the freedom of a man whose group unleashes fear, forced sit-at-home enforcements, terror, and death on the very Easterners Obi claims to love. If the people are terrorized and their economy is paralyzed, Obi doesn’t care, as long as it scores him political points.
None of this should surprise anyone who looked at his track record as governor of Anambra State, where he practically pioneered the art of starving the public sector. He locked up the state’s resources, froze jobs, cut off welfare, and bragged about leaving billions in the bank while the ordinary people who needed government support were left to rot.
Look at how he handled the medical doctors in Anambra, triggering a historic 13-month strike between 2011 and 2012. Instead of managing the state’s general hospitals, his administration completely ignored the doctors’ demands for fair wages. He chose instead to fund mission and private Catholic institutions, effectively making affordable healthcare a myth. And just recently, when confronted about this 13-month health sector shutdown, Obi offered the ultimate sarcastic excuse: he argued that since there were “no mass deaths,” the doctors must not have been very effective anyway. Imagine that level of empathy, if you didn’t die in mass graves, his policy was a success!
He brought that same elitist energy to education. Obi was one of the first governors to boldly act on the belief that education is a luxury, not a right for the poor. He weaponized tuition fees at Anambra State University (ANSU), aggressively hiking them from a manageable ₦36,000 all the way up to ₦86,000 for regular courses and over ₦120,000 for professional courses, with some fees eventually reaching ₦230,000. When students and peasant parents protested, he reportedly justified it by saying education is not meant for the poor. To make things worse, he forced secondary school students to pay three terms’ worth of fees upfront, successfully driving vulnerable, low-income children straight out of the school system.
And while he was preaching this gospel of “prudence” and telling the masses to tighten their belts, what was the “Saint” doing behind the scenes? He was busy keeping the public funds of poor Anambrans trapped in his own family bank, all while tucking his millions of dollars safely away in secret offshore tax havens.
When you interrogate Peter Obi’s speeches, past and present actions, with a drop of objectivity, he game is clear.
Peter has a deep-seated disdain for the Nigerian masses, he doesn’t like this country and he will gladly throw them under the bus if it helps his ambition.
He is the punisher of the poor and he will do it every single chance he gets.