Professor Farooq Kperogi, a media scholar based in the United States, said on Saturday that Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, is “suffering from a delusional disorder” over his claim that his mandate was stolen.
Kperogi stated that Obi, who did not receive more than 25% of the vote in 20 of Nigeria’s 36 states in the last general election, could not claim that the ruling All Progressives Congress stole his mandate (APC).
In his weekly column, Kperogi stated: “The structure of the church that enabled him (Obi) to win pan-regional Christian votes (except in Yoruba land where ethnic solidarity proved to be more potent than religion) also limited and doomed him. It made it constitutionally impossible for him to be president even if he won a plurality of the vote.
“That is why I think Obi is suffering from a delusional disorder when he talks of his “mandate” being “stolen.” What “mandate”? As Muhammadu Buhari will tell him, intense religious mobilization of voters can take a candidate far, but it can never lead to a national mandate.
“Obi couldn’t possibly have a national mandate when he couldn’t get up to 25% of the votes in Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Jigawa, Borno, Yobe, Katsina, Gombe, Bauchi, Adamawa, Kwara, Niger, Kogi, Kebbi, Ondo, Osun, Ekiti, Oyo, Ogun. That’s 20 out of Nigeria’s 36 states. He won or got more than 25% of the votes in only 16 states. With or without rigging, I can bet my life that the outcome would be the same.
“When people are ensconced in their hermetically sealed echo chambers, they hear only their own voices and noises. The sounds that exist outside their self-created silos are always inaudible to them. That’s precisely what’s happening to Obi and his devotees. But I look forward to what his petition will reveal.”
