Peter Gregory Obi, the Presidential Candidate of the Labor Party (LP) in the forthcoming Nigerian Presidential Election was the Governor of Anambra State for eight (8) years. Prior to his election, he boasted he will turn Anambra to London, Paris or New York. For 8 years, he was unable to achieve this. As Chief Executive Governor of Anambra State, Obi presided over a state that was devoid of electricity, good roads, healthcare, and economic opportunities.

Under his watch, indigenes of Anambra States trooped to Lagos in search of a greener pasture. By 2013, their number in Lagos had reached an alarming state, with thousands of them sleeping under bridges, uncompleted buildings, and any other places they could convert into makeshift homes. They were urinating and defecating in any and all available spaces and turned Lagos into an eyesore. In addition to vagrancy, they were the masterminds of crimes in Lagos.

The then Lagos State governor, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, appealed to Peter Obi to find a solution to the huge number of economic migrants from Anambra in Lagos but was rebuffed. Fashola later relocated these economic migrants who were gradually turning Lagos into something of an eyesore with their vagrancy, back to Anambra.

Rather than finding a solution to the problem of poor governance in Anambra and retain its citizens in the state, Obi protested the deportation of Anambra vagrants in Lagos, arguing that it was his people’s Constitutional right to reside anywhere of their choosing in Nigeria.

What happened to the resources of Anambra under Peter Obi? Why were his people robbing Lagosians? Why were they sleeping under bridges? Why were they urinating and defecating in open spaces and inside culverts across Lagos?

At his recent outing at Chatham House, London, he paraded himself as an apostle of good governance, openness, and transparency. Obi’s only stint in political office was as Governor of Anambra State. As the above showed, his stint in power was characterized by egregious mismanagement and lack of economic opportunities. The result of these includes a mass migration of Anambra youths to Lagos.

Since his emergence as a Presidential candidate of the Labor Party, many have begun to rewrite history by (mis)representing Obi’s governance records in statistics-laden prescriptions, outlandish claims of success, etc.

If all over the years and passing through the realities of our life dreams die and people forget, it is only apposite for men and women of conscience who keep their memories intact to remind us of who the Peter Gregory Obi is.

As revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Obi is one of Nigeria’s state officials, influential politicians, businesspersons, and criminals who engaged the services of clandestine “offshore services firms around the world” to set up “shell companies and other offshore entities … to conceal their financial dealings.” (See Premium Times of October 4, 2021, for details).

As the Pandora Papers showed, while in office and since leaving office, Obi owned several businesses and had business relationships that were kept secret and never declared both in his previous assets’ declaration forms and his current one – pursuant of his current effort to rule Nigeria. These businesses are operated in tax havens overseas in a clear breach of Nigerian laws.

In his admission, Obi noted that he did not declare these properties, including companies and funds held overseas while he was filing his asset declaration forms with the Code of Conduct Bureau – Nigeria’s only agency dealing with abuse of office, corruption, and conflict of interest involving public servants.

This self-acclaimed smart person who wrote on his own website that he was “Chairman of Next International Nigeria Ltd, Chairman and director of Guardian Express Mortgage Bank Ltd, Guardian Express Bank Plc, Future View Securities Ltd, Paymaster Nigeria Ltd, Chams Nigeria Ltd, Data Corp Ltd and Card Centre Ltd” was unaware that Nigerian laws expected him to declare his foreign assets, properties, and companies, including those he owned jointly with his family members and other persons.

While stashing public funds in tax havens, Anambra State and its people were wallowing in abject poverty, forced to cope with a lack of potable water – a development that resulted in constant outbreak of cholera and dysentery in the 8 years of Peter Obi’s reign as governor. Rather than providing employment opportunities for his people, the very people who voted him into office, he crookedly diverted state allocation into his private companies in tax havens.

Since his emergence as the Presidential flag-bearer of the Labor Party, Obi has been boasting of his administration’s investment of state’s revenues in bakery, brewery, and buying shares in corporate organizations. While many have applauded him over4 this, the incumbent governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chukwuma Soludo, has rubbished Obi’s claim, revealing that while the per share value of the state’s shares in the brewery, for instance, was 50 naira in 2013, it is now five naira per share. In other words, Obi wasted the state’s resources. With this revelation, it is clear that Obi is not an economic or business guru but a charlatan that not only stole state resources, but also wasted those he did not steal.

With Dr. Soludo’s emergence as the new governor of Anambra State, Obi admitted publicly that he invested Anambra State’s money into his family business. Despite claiming to have studied at Harvard and other prestigious institutions across the world, Obi submitted just GCE certificate to INEC. Are these indicative of something more that needed attention about Obi? I think so.

For many Nigerians, Peter Obi is a young man and therefore a respite from the ongoing gerontocratic system. Peter Obi’s deliberate falsehood and lack of transparency, his poor economic sense showed that Obi’s youthfulness reeks of exuberance, poor sense of judgement, and a preference for himself. These qualities (or a lack thereof) are a bane, rather than a gain, for Nigeria.