From what I am seeing and have seen, the man is the biggest phenomenon in Nigeria since MKO Abiola (for those too young to understand who MKO was in the political space thirty years ago)
What is happening around the country right now especially in the South of Nigeria with the Obi Hurricane is something unprecedented.
I have looked at my political map again today and I have been poring at strategies, permutations and possibilities all day.
Peter Obi, RIGHT NOW, will overwhelmingly win 14 states in Nigeria, if the elections were to hold today and IF the Labour Party has all its polling agents and officers in each of the polling units in Nigeria.
That is quite a lot of states and he would require just 10 more states to win the election if that were to be the case today.
Mind you, these permutations are not cast in stone. Wining the 14 states does not mean the other candidates will not win the other states and even in the states which are projected to go for Obi. They will but my analysis on this is on the constitutional requirements that a candidate has to fulfill to be declared winner. The candidate has to win 24 states by a one third percentage of the votes constitutionally. If the momentum continues like this till February next year, Obi will surely have the following 15 states locked down for him.
Abia, Anambra,Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Cross Rivers….
Here’s where it gets interesting; Obi will get the one third votes in Lagos! I’m positive he will. APC will, PDP might but Obi will get the constitutional one third in Lagos. I believe he will get same one third in Ondo State too. That’s a state of enlightened voters and the state has an Ijaw/Riverine population who are politically savvy and will go with swing votes. But much mobilization has to be done in that state. The Labour Party will not be strange to the state as a former Governor of Ondo State, Dr Mimiko, won his election under the Labour Party. It will be easier to push for a case for the Labour Party and Obi in strategic constituencies in Ondo.
Obi will get the constitutional requirements in the FCT. The FCT voters are mostly cosmopolitan and more Nigerians have relocated to the FCT in the past few years from the Southern part of Nigeria and that’s an advantage for Obi.
Obi will get the votes in Benue State. That’s a very enlightened state in the Middle Belt and the youths in that state are part of a restless generation which requires a huge paradigm shift in their lives.
It should be noted that these projections are based on factors written above and have not in anyway given the election to Obi as the clear winner. What this projection does is to show the potential states and regions Obi will get the required constitutional votes from.
Last week, I privately counted only 7 states but the momentum has shifted by another 7 states today. This has to do with the fall-out of the APC convention a few days ago where Tinubu’s emergence has disillusioned much of the youth base, which has now fully turned to Obi as their candidate.
There is much work to be done in the next few months to get those votes in the new states and to penetrate the North, where the heavy voting numbers are. But Obi has begun a movement and as that movement grows, Hope follows.
By Charles Novia
