By Evaristus Bassey
If Peter Obi becomes president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2023, much as some can attribute this to purely social and political dynamics, the man or woman of faith would not fail to see the mysterious hand of God.
Most times when God does something it does not necessarily appear as an addition to a zero sum. For instance you wouldn’t be lacking money and after praying you go into your bedroom and see a stack of dollar bills on your bed. God would have to lead you to a situation or a person that would be of benefit to you. Sometimes because the hand of God is not empirically visible cynics tend to dismiss any deference to God in terms of any achievements as mere speculation. Secular humanists extol the virtues of man’s intellect and extol its ability to attain knowledge devoid of any divine inspiration. Most masonic societies tend towards a form of secular humanism and it is a principal reason why the Catholic Church does not subscribe to masonry, because it does not admit of divine revelation.
Sometimes you hear people say, try your best and leave the rest to God, as if divine effect comes only after human effort had exhausted itself. In the proper sense human effort in any endeavour is seen as 100% and divine assistance equally 100%; it is not a 50/50 co-responsibility. This is why faith is a requirement, because it is the virtue that opens the heart and mind to perceive the action of the divine, whereas a mere secularist mindset would attribute things to effort and luck.
There are many believers who do not understand the principle that reliance on divine assistance does not preclude excellency of effort. Many Nigerians fall into this trap. Instead of the dictum ‘to work is to pray’ being a truism in their lives, it is rather ‘to pray is to work.’ Without the necessary skills nor their due application, they expect the most benign of benefits as a mark of the God who has favoured them. Of course God works in mysterious ways and sometimes chooses the weak over the strong but even those weaklings God chooses, it is because he sees in them what no one else has seen, because their socialization had been preparatory enough. Take David and Goliath. David was a shepherd boy whose entire disposition was in caring and defending his sheep, manifesting such courage as to even fend off and exterminate dangerously wild animals. When David met Goliath, he had already overcome the fear instinct, having faced more daring situations without any expectation of applause. In all the famed cases, we see that God doesn’t just lift up someone from a vacuum and entrust a mission to them, except with people like the prophet Amos who was a tender of sycamore trees and God asked him to go prophesy to the people of Samaria. God working in mysterious ways entails therefore a process which could be long and tortuous, which may not even be obvious to the person initially, until the divine purpose becomes obvious.
Obi himself had to be prepared. I am not certain that the day Peter Obi decided to contest for the governorship of Anambra he had it as part of his “lifelong ambition” to be the Nigerian president. He saw an opportunity in the political dynamics that played out in Anambra and cashed in. He fought for his mandate and won the victory and was sworn in. An election was conducted despite having assumed office less than a year and his appeal led to the proper interpretation of executive tenure in Nigeria. In the legislature, if it takes one three years and eleven months to claim one’s mandate, they will spend only a month in the chambers, because the legislature serves as an assembly not as individuals, and it is sworn in as an assembly. But an elected executive is sworn in under a tenure with a specific duration; four years for a governor and his deputy, the president and his vice and three years for a local government chairperson and the vice. If an elected executive spends wins after nearly four years of fighting for his mandate, he would do the complete tenure beginning from the day they were sworn in. It is thanks to Peter Obi that this clarity was established. And as if his travails would never end, he was impeached and yet he won back his seat as governor.
Before Obi began being invited to the Platform where many Nigerians got to know his ‘antics’ in Anambra, some of us had been wowed already when he was invited to the Education Summit organized by the Education Unit of the Catholic Secretariat. I was then Director of Church and Society and Education was a unit under Church and Society with Fr. Benard Asogo as Secretary. That was when we got to hear from Obi personally how his engagement with the State House of Assembly led to the massive collaboration with the Catholic and Anglican Churches in health and education which spiraled good outcomes for citizens of the state. We heard from Obi how education budget was made based on number of schools and how both Catholic and Anglican Churches received more money for their schools than the state ministry of education because the state ran less schools. Obi’s government had earlier on returned schools to their original owners and was allocating grants-in-aid to these original owners as a form of compensation and a way to ensuring the right of every child to a good education. We heard from him how government contractors quoted humungous amounts for renovation works but the religious institutions quoted far less, and the money was awarded to them to renovate the schools or hospital structures, with a good savings for government. By the time Atiku Abubakar took Obi as his running mate in the 2019 elections, Peter Obi and his ‘antics’ were already known. As Farooq Kperoggi wrote, Atiku and Obi won that election but the late Abba Kyari ensured INEC did his bidding and declared a winner differently from the expected winner. With the indices existing then: the heightened insecurity, the steep economic downturn, the social discontent exacerbated by the brazen nepotism of the Buhari regime, there was no way Buhari would have won a free and fair election except for the abracadabra that INEC displayed. 2019 was Atiku’s best chance of being president and the fact he didn’t emerge would give a person of faith reason to see the hand of God in the matter.
And now in 2023, events within the Peoples Democratic Party have forced Obi to take a lone path, going to a minority party and becoming its presidential candidate amidst a bloodless socio-political revolution driven largely by youths who see in him a new hope for Nigeria. If Peter Obi becomes president of Nigeria eventually, it wouldn’t be something that just happened; it would be that God heard the cry of his children in Nigeria and initiated the process that brought them a Moses.
Evaristus Bassey is a Catholic priest.
