By Wilfred Uji There has been widespread condemnation of the recent attack on Peter Obi and Prof. Terhemba Shija in Benue State recently. Allow me, as a close ally of the Professor to join in condemning the attacks by irate youths on the team ehich was on a humanitarian visit to Yelwata in Benue State. Furthermore, I will use this platform to chip in my thinking on the state of politics, violence and development of Nigeria as it underscores the political ambition of Peter Obi and Professor Terhemba Shija. Ordinarily, a humanitarian visit ought not to have turned violent but this incident deeply reflects the leadership decay and poor quality of our youthful population on which education appears to have been wasted in the recent past. The interface between a clueless, purposeless leadership on one hand and the drug addicted cult gangster youth society on the other hand, reflects the deep dilemma of the development trajectory of Benue State. Benue State is taken captive and hostage by a 'Rasputin leadership' that has hypnotized the minds of its youthful population which believes in a cultic figure bent on the isolation and destruction of prominent political elite of Benue State for his sole material and sexual aggrandisement. The attack on Peter Obi ought not to have come as a surprise considering having served in a previous leadership which laid the foundation of violent politics in contemporary Benue State. As much as I sympathize with Peter Obi, I also marvel at naivety in some quarters about the violent nature of the politics of Benue State. Perhaps, the assumption that Benue State is under the rule of a Priest may have disarmed one's preparedness for the kind of violent reception that Obi received in Benue State. Rasputin was much a priest in politics but manipulated and exploited his claims to supernatural powers to control the seat of the Russian State factor in the Czar. Religion has always been the Opium of the masses, a factor which ought not to have been taken for granted by Obi's team. While some hypnotized youths dream of a Benue State being led to the promised land, we all know that Benue State has been reduced to the fiefdom of its ruling political class. Which leads me to the second assumption. I welcome Prof. Shija's decision to contest for the governorship position of Benue State and will gladly serve in whatever capacity deemed fit during the campaigns. However, let us remind ourselves about the leadership recruitment process in Benue State which often refuses to patronize the best of intellectual elite for leadership and statecraft. Leadership recruitment in Benue State since 1999 ignores the fact that statecraft is a skilled political art that requires leaders in leadership positions for persons who are thoroughly prepared and well equiped for leadership. Leadership recruitment is about merit, integrity and excellence, not for pecuniary gain, manipulation and exploitation of state resources at the expense of the masses. The leadership recruitment process of Benue State and, to an extent, the larger Nigerian State, mostly favours mediocres, people of questionable character and integrity who can be easily manipulated and controlled by the patrons of the state. In Nigeria and Benue State in particular, it is the interface between militant radicalized violent youth gangster politics and patronage politics that has shaped and defined leadership recruitment and development in both military and civil rule since 1983. The sole objective of politics in Nigeria is shaped and defined by prebendary politics and isolates merit and excellence in leadership recruitment as well as the development and transformation of Nigeria. Against this backdrop, I have reflected on the candidacy and political ambitions of Peter Obi and Prof. Shija. How do the two political figures, excellent gentleman, fit into the violent and manipulative mode of Nigerian politics and development? Leadership in Nigeria requires two fundamental things for success - first, slavish obedience to the patrons of the Nigerian State; secondly, slavish loyalty to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund , the world economy structures that control the commanding heights of the Nigerian economy. The interface between national patrons and the global economic aristocracy has remained the basic economic determinants defining the Nigerian economy under the framework of Neo Liberal Economy since Independence. Peter Obi has brilliant and articulate statistics on development that are not in doubt just like Prof. Shija - excellence, oratory and eloquence. They are some of the finest minds of neo-liberal economics and political transformation. They could have been an excellent choice for some radical revolution, certainly not a bourgeois revolution under the framework of the IMF. Above all, political power is never secured on a platter of gold or on the altar of rhetorics and brilliant statistics. To capture political power, there is need for grassroots structures that are well equiped, funded and mobilized to wrest power from the ruling political elite. 'Since the days of John the Baptist, the Kingdom of God suffereth violence and only the violent take it by force'. Peter Obi and Prof. Terhemba Shija should know that. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and perhaps former President Muhammadu Buhari understood the basic principles of Machiavellian politics and I refer Obi and Shija to the school of brutal pragmatic political philosophy if they truly want to grab political power in a developing nation like Nigeria. - Dr. Uji writes from Lafia, Nasarawa State

Posted: 1month ago

Author: Editor in Chief

Current date: 18 October 2026