Opinion

SOS: Who Will Cure Peter Obi of Lying?

Published

2 years ago

Nov 20, 2022.

The Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Gregory Obi has, once again, woven another web of lies around himself. This one happened a few days ago during a project commissioning in Rivers State.

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But before Nigerians are availed of his latest lies, it is important to put into proper context Obi’s propensity to lie even when there’s absolutely no reason to do so with the hope that some of his closest OBI-dients may advice him to seek medical help before he completely self-destruct, thereby destroying the remaining vestige of respect left in him as a political leader in the Nigerian nation.

The generally known, common descriptive adjectives that are used to identify someone who lies incessantly are “compulsive” and/or “pathological.” The more serious medical term for compulsive or pathological liars is “mythomania or pseudologia fantastica” which is described as a “chronic behavior of compulsive or habitual lying.”

The definition also says unlike some lies that are told either to “avoid hurting someone’s feelings or getting in trouble, a pathological liar” would “lie for no apparent reason.” This is the advanced stage of lying in which Peter Obi, who wants to superintend the affairs of more than 200 million Nigerians now finds himself. And he needs medical help very quickly.

Obi’s feeling of no compunction to lie, once again, came into the fore during a project commissioning event organised by Nyesom Wike in Rivers where he said, “Peter Odili was my senior at (CKC); we played football together. If Odili is not able to play, just know we have lost that day. Everyone knows my school and my schoolmates. Not some people that no one knows their schoolmates or the schools they attended.”

Peter Odili, a medical doctor, was a two-term (1999-2007) governor of Rivers State who’s said to be in his early 70s. He graduated from Christ the King College (CKC) in 1967 while Obi was admitted into the same school in 1973 and graduated in 1978.

It’s obvious, and a matter of common sense that Obi, who entered CKC six years after Odili had left the school, couldn’t have claimed that the latter was his senior, not to talk of playing football with him. If he had nothing to say during the commissioning either about his bid for Nigeria’s exalted seat or his new party, why couldn’t he just cut the tape and thank his host for the invitation? Must he lie when there was no reason to? Who asked him about his secondary school sports experience?

A serious presidential candidate who has something to offer the Nigerian people would have seized the golden opportunity offered by Governor Nyesom Wike through the commissioning of one of his projects in a state that has the second highest voting population in southern Nigeria after Lagos to articulate his manifesto to that state’s electorate. But then Obi could not do that because he already said he doesn’t need a manifesto to govern a complex country like Nigeria.

Governor Charles Soludo of Anambra State has said Peter Obi and a few leaders in the polity knows why the Labour Party presidential candidate is running, which means it wasn’t about winning the presidential election but for a different reason(s). Could his telling lies, most of which are absolutely unnecessary during campaign trails, be one of those reasons? Or is he trying to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records as a presidential candidate that tells the most lies? The mountain of lies with which Nigerians have been inundated since his presidential declaration speaks to a seriously and hopelessly flawed man who doesn’t know when to say when.

Somebody should please save Peter Obi from himself by advising him to seek medical help because his compulsion to lie is an unprecedented new low in the history of presidential campaigns in a democracy in Nigeria, perhaps in the world.