Prince Justice Faloye
As much as I personally like Peter Obi and was even a Southwest Obidient coordinator, I was turned off by his recent statement denying the effect of colonialism and tying it to a vague concept of leadership virtues. For mysterious reasons, trying to obscure and absolve the neocolonist administrative, political, legal, academic and economic structures that arrest our economic and political development. This goes beyond a leadership comparison between Peter Obi and Tinubu but an indictment of the entire system.
He sounded like those African American Republicans that blame African Americans for poverty, telling them to pull up their bootstraps while ignoring the historic and socioeconomic cost of slavery and ongoing institutional racism and financial caste system. This is the same way Eurocentric African scholars blame and castigate our ancestors and traditional systems. Election campaigning is over and such statements keeps our people blind to the invisible hand of coloniality, making us self destructive and inspire racial inferiority complex and tribalism.
It is well researched that the mirage of leadership that he blames are moulded by the various forms of coloniality, and there is an ongoing global decoloniality movement that is social, spiritual and an advancement from political decolonization. There is coloniality of knowledge sources that obscures our origins and aspirations, through epistemicide/derailing and demonization of our traditional systems through mischievous interpretation of Ekwensu/Esu into Satan, all to propagates wrong self-destructive divisive perspectives (mental slavery). There is coloniality of power sources like Chatham House and various foreign foundations and institutions that acknowledges and empowers our academic, opinion and political leadership (political slavery). There is coloniality of ecology that restricts every single Black nation to the production and export of a single raw material that we don’t refine but import their foreign manufactures in a global financial caste system that decides our commodity prices, loans and financial system (economic slavery). There is coloniality of self that shapes and distorts our worldview from civilizationalism to tribalism, from Binary Complementarity philosophies to Binary Opposition philosophies, our identity, what we consume and aspirations (spiritual slavery).
Yes, character traits of the leader does matter but even the best is constrained within a band of a neocolonial spectrum, normally restricted to superficial changes that don’t change economic and political foundations, especially changes taking away from the Western Powers for the benefit of the local masses.
While millions of Obidients are disillusioned by the electoral and judicial system, and wonder why Peter Obi isn’t pulling the system down for robbing him of his mandate, it is painful to see him actually protecting the system and the neocolonials guards which he and the political class belong. Like President Jonathan who knew the sinister plot and foresaw the great plight his beloved Nigeria was about to be subjected for the last eight years, but instead of fighting with everything, he chose to keep his peace and space at the neocolonist table, being a lifetime electoral observer and our masters warning Voice to any Negro nation that wants to stray.
This is not to blame or excuse the neocolonist guards, those who sustain the Neocolonial system, but just spelling out the reality that without the comfort of an articulated and united indigenous Original African civilization, that can pay and support them for life as done in other civilizations, most Black political, academic and opinion leaders have to align with foreign predatory civilizations to further fulfill their ambitions and feather their retirement nests, at the expense of truth, their conscience and collective advancement and destiny
If the Baba of them all, the Obaluaye (essence of structure) of Nigeria, President Obasanjo that was a co-creator of the 1979 and 1999 Western styled democratic dispensations can eat humble pie and admit that the problem is the adoption of Western cut and paste democracy that has failed in every Black nation of Africa and the Caribbean, then what is Peter Obi saying when the campaign season is over and we need to educate the people. The denial of the obvious is not really surprising since Peter Obi, Tinubu, Atiku are all neocolonial guards, but Peter Obi’s Spartan lifestyle tying into his cost of governance mantra appealed to the meritocratic civilizationalism of South and Middlebelt masses, while important stakeholders backed him based on cultural justice of rotational presidency.
On reading through the manifestos of the three leading presidential candidates before the election, I wrote an article titled Neocolonial Administrators or Revolutionaries, noting they were all neocolonist perspectives. Their Coloniality of knowledge made them all focus on the morality and consumption of fuel subsidies without considering its impact and multiplier effects on the productive economy, especially one run on 90% fossil fuel. Their ideas were based on slave plantation economics and theology that if you run an agriculture plantation perfectly you will gain heaven on Earth.
Though they spoke of railways as a transportation mode, there was a general ignorance that railways were the launchpad of heavy industrialization being the largest production system with iron and chemicals that could lead to engine making, car and aircraft production. Some say the politicians feigned ignorance not to scare away their Western masters that know not only will it relink our civilizational economics, but it would result in our own industry military complex that could turn passenger cars into armoured vehicles of an arms industry that would chase out foreign civilizational colonists from Africa. So instead of selling industrialization, they mouth returning to the farms to our tech savvy youth like bush people. You will never hear a White president offering to return his people to farms for prosperity, they talk of industrialization.
Peter Obi was informed when we met, that long before he emerged as a presidential candidate, I had been one of the most vociferous SW proponents for a SE president based on the principle of rotational presidency and regional justice, and was now one of his most ardent supporters. This led to some of my students, knowing my long term clamour for a revolutionary change across the Black Race through decoloniality, questioned why I was supporting Peter Obi that was backed by Catholic coloniality and Obasanjo, the Obaluaye of our neocolonial structure.
I responded that every single leader has been a product of coloniality, either of Western or Islamic civilization, since our Original African civilization was not articulated and unified into a bloc. Therefore all we can demand at this point in time, is for the neocolonist system to also choose one neocolonist guard from the Southeast for fairness and Justice. Especially, because the neocolonist machinations had used the Igbo collective to stop the 1960s Afro-Arabic civilizational imperialism against the Southern Indigenous Original African civilization, which had been misinterpreted in tribal perspectives leading to their demonization and most importantly Yoruba-Igbo sibling rivalry to the disadvantage of the entire indigenous African civilizational unity of South and Middlebelt. Therefore we need an Igbo president to get over the Civil War and put to rest the demonization on all sides to have a peaceful family.
Some people say even if they agree that the Southeast Igbos are the next in line with rotational presidency, Peter Obi is not the best Igbos could provide. I retorted that Obasanjo was not the best Yorubaland could furnish, neither was Goodluck Jonathan the best Ijaw delta could put forward, nor was Buhari definitely not the best of the North. All we the electorate do is choose the best put forward by the neocolonist institutions, normally based on loyalty and not merit, in the army, the church, business, academia or whatever sphere they are put forward. Since African leadership doesn’t evolve from the grassroots with an Original African civilizational worldview, and even if they ever do, they have to be co-opted by the Neocolonist system or they would be blockaded by the media and political system.
Peter Obi was the last chance of the neocolonist system to allow someone that would allow us to breathe. If they can’t cut the global Western neocolonial excesses resulting in our economic deprivations, the local neocolonist class should cut their own excesses in cost of governance. Between the slavemasters and foremen Something gotta give for the masses to breathe.
Also, Peter Obi was seen as a cultural justice candidate that would unite the Indigenous African civilization only after which we can challenge European and Afro-Arabic civilizational colonialism through restructuring. Unfortunately due to some exogenous factors like the French losing Sahel Africa, the West switched their backing to a civilizationally divisive Tinubu, who would neither curtail the economic excesses and deprivations of our global Western neocolonist masters nor of the local neocolonist guards that he now led.
Ironically, Tinubu now appears to be the vehicle to real revolution against the neocolonist system. His mumbled neo-liberal economic policies will widen poverty and his perchant for absolute power will lead to a one party state through rigging and the judiciary, making it clear that people will have to fight or die in hunger. Removing subsidies and devaluing naira while increasing size and cost of governance by appointing more ministers and spending our commonwealth on frivolities like yachts, expensive cars etc pushes the people to the wall. This is why people are now taking of revolution against the entire system. Peter Obi would have just put bandages on our neocolonist wounds, like a benevolent foreman that keeps the slave plantation clean and orderly but won’t bring down the slave plantation system or equal share of profits between the slavemasters and the slaves..
The masses may not know the fine details of colonialism and coloniality since the most pro-people of the neocolonist guard keep trying to obscure them, not wanting to cause class suicide. However, with the enthronement of an anti-people neocolonist that increases poverty by reducing government responsibility and increasing taxation, the people will be pushed to the wall and revolt for a new social contract. The problem is if we don’t counter Peter Obi miseducation on coloniality such revolution will just be a change in personalities as we have seen over the last 60yrs.
We need a change from a predatory neocolonist system to responsible civilizational governance, which I believe that this generation can achieve in the political sphere as it has done in the cultural sphere with Afrobeats.
