I remembered when Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his campaign talked about widening the Tax net, Obidients which included me at the time run around with it and jokingly mocked him by calling him a tax collector.
On a closer observation over time I realised that given the conditions of the economy, it made no sense not to have an effective tax system. Governance needs money to run and in our case trillions of dollars has been sunk into subsidy on fuel and dollars.
What Nigerians should appreciate this administration for especially on the tax law is that the government realised it needs money through tax but at the same time shouldn't place the burden on the people. The poor and the vulnerable wouldn't pay and payments only increases as income/profits increases. The elites who saw this as a direct attack on their wealth used gullible Nigerians to fight the tax law. This is one of the reasons I don't rate Obidients. They're not the smartest.
I just finished watching Peter Obi’s 1 hour 23-minute interview with Rufai, and I did so with a completely open mind. He’s not my party’s candidate, but I sat down to hear the plan. There was no plan. Just a man with nice wishes and an empty file where the strategy should be.
Every time Rufai pressed him with, “How will you fix power, education, insecurity?” Obi reached for the same convenient answer: “Don’t worry, I’ll do it. I did it in Anambra.” That’s not an answer; that’s a slogan. Running 200 million people is not Anambra. And “trust me bro” can never be a strategy to enhance power or to fight insecurity.
And let’s retire this Anambra myth once and for all. The issues burning across Nigeria today, for example, mass insecurity, multidimensional poverty, a broken power grid, a currency in freefall, a debt trap, and so on, are crises that were never under his jurisdiction as governor. As such, he cannot claim antecedents as proof that he can solve them. You don’t get to wave away a problem you never faced as proof that you’ve already conquered it. That’s not experience. That’s storytelling.
My takeaway is simple, Peter Obi can describe the Nigeria he wants to see. What he failed to demonstrate in this interview is that he has a credible, detailed, and executable pathway to get us there. If this is what the NDC is offering Nigeria in 2027, then the NDC and the Obidient movement have a candidate who can describe the destination but cannot drive the car.
A destination without a map is not a plan. It is a wish.