David Achonu:The Political Class War: Why the Elite Fear Obi and the Masses Trust Him

The corrupt political elite—across party lines, regions, and ethnic divides—do not merely disagree with Peter Obi. They despise him. Why? Because he is a living indictment of their lifestyle: a parasitic existence built on the looting of public treasury, the glorification of mediocrity, and the ruthless exclusion of the majority.

To them, Obi is not a rival candidate. He is a nightmare in a quiet suit—a man who shuns private jets, publishes his assets, and weeps for a nation they have turned into a carcass. As the philosopher Edmund Burke warned, _“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”_ Obi’s very insistence on accountability is a threat to their freeloading empire.

But the ordinary Nigerian—the trader, the teacher, the unemployed graduate, the farmer—sees in Obi something the elite cannot fathom: a leader who does not see them as prey. They support him not out of tribal loyalty, but out of existential hunger for a better country. As James Baldwin wrote, _“The price of the liberation of the colonized is the liquidation of the colonizer.”_ For the marginalized Nigerian, Obi is not just a candidate; he is hope walking on two feet.

Make no mistake—this is a class war. On one side stands a tiny, powerful cabal that has pauperized a nation to fatten itself. On the other side stands the silent majority, rising with their PVCs, tired of being robbed in broad daylight. As Chinua Achebe famously said, _“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”_ Obi refuses to be compromised. That is why the elite hate him. That is why the people love him.

Mr David Achonu, a public affairs analyst, writes from Owerri, Imo state, Nigeria