Peter Obi Presidency: Prospects of a New Day for Benue

Today, November 9, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, will be holding a campaign rally in Benue State. Obi will be addressing supporters at the IBB Square in Makurdi. This is after holding similar rallies in Nasarawa and Plateau States.
As he touches down in Makurdi today, Peter Obi will be greeted by a rising army of supporters led by various support groups which have been pushing for the ObiDatti ticket since its emergence on the ballot. Benue is one of the states projected to vote Obi overwhelmingly. First, the state, which is essentially a PDP state, has in recent times been involved in crisis with the party at the national level. At the heart of this crisis is Governor Samuel Ortom’s opposition to the presidential candidate of the party, Atiku Abubakar. In this opposition, Ortom is in a league with governors of four other PDP states, led by Nyesom Wike of Rivers State.
Second, Benue has been at the receiving end of insecurity caused by foreign militia disguised as Nigerian herdsmen. Thousands of Benue indigenes are crowded in internally displaced persons’ (IDP) camps across the state, some of which predate Samuel Ortom’s administration. Benue indigenes are particularly displeased with the APC government of Muhammadu Buhari for not only failing to tackle the situation, but appearing on a number of occasions, to be biased in the favour of the invaders.
Perhaps, the IDP camps are the most notable symbol of Benue’s pain in today’s Nigeria. Some indigenes have been displaced from their homes and farmlands for over eight years. Not only have they lost dear ones in very brutal circumstances, but they are now living in subhuman conditions, having to depend on the goodwill of others for their daily needs. These are citizens who were once proud farmers with lofty socioeconomic ambitions, who have now been reduced to paupers in their own country.
More saddening is the fact that there has been no measurable commitment by the Buhari regime towards making their villages safe enough for them to return. They appear to have been abandoned to the state government which is limited in finance and scope of security intervention. Unable to rid these villages of residual terrorists who continue to strike at those who venture to return, the Buhari regime has also refused to authorize local arrangements by the state government to enhance security within its borders. This, too, is a long-standing grievance in the hearts of Benue people.
This grievance is part of why the APC’s chances are dim in state in the presidential race. Benue indigenes have come to consider the party as one with dual allegiances – partly to the Nigerian state and partly to an ethno-regional agenda of land grabbing, subtly executed via a well-known traffic of invaders which the federal government has been reluctant to handle with the required firmness. To worsen the matter is the emergence of Bola Tinubu as presidential candidate of the party. Not only is Tinubu considered too physically frail and intellectually retired for the presidency, he is also accused of being one of those who sold Buhari to Nigerians. Benue, therefore, sees him as a continuation of the Buhari regime’s unmitigated failure.
Against this background, Peter Obi’s emergence on the ballot presents a unique breath of fresh air for the entire country, but especially for Benue. The physically healthy and intellectually robust Obi has already crisscrossed three notable towns in the state – Makurdi, Gboko and Otukpo. In Makurdi, Obi was on the ground to assess by himself the depressing living conditions of the IDPs.
Obi’s visit to the IDP camps created a resurgence of hope in the hearts of the otherwise grief-accustomed, perennially neglected citizens. It reawakened the IDPs to their age-long dream of resettlement. For the first time since their displacement, it seemed like the possibility of their predicament making it to the hallowed chambers of the presidency was on the horizon. That possibility is a man, the first among the presidential candidates to suspend his campaign in order to visit flood victims across the country.
More fundamentally, Obi promises to decentralise policing in the federation. He promises to make constitutional provisions for state police, which will allow states to take firm control of security in their domains. It will provide Benue the much-craved but constantly denied opportunity to mop up the residues of terrorists operating in the communities. Reclaiming the villages will facilitate the return of the IDPs to their homes, restore to them their human dignity, enable them to grow their own food, and initiate their healing from the unimaginable trauma that befell them.
As Obi campaigns today in the state, Benue must recognise what unique opportunity the ObiDatti ticket presents. It is, generally, an opportunity to reclaim and restore the Nigerian federation through a responsive, responsible and patriotic presidency. More specifically, it will aid Benue to put behind her the dark chapter of massacres, internal displacement, and impoverishment, creating the environment for a new agenda of development. This is the new day which now hovers on the horizon for Benue and her people.