Babs

I am utterly disappointed in you, Elnathan. For someone who supposedly prides himself on intellectual reasoning, this is an astonishingly shallow, intellectually dishonest argument. I genuinely expected better. You've written an entire essay attacking a position Peter Obi never took, while conveniently ignoring the most disturbing allegation in his statement. The issue isn't that Peter Obi was denied an opportunity to greet the national team. The issue is WHY he was allegedly denied. The officials reportedly told him they would LOSE THEIR JOBS if he approached the players. Does that sound like ordinary protocol to you? Since when does allowing an opposition politician to congratulate Nigerian athletes become a sackable offence? You claim the greeting would have political implications. SO WHAT? Are Nigerian athletes now the private property of the ruling party? Does being an opposition politician automatically disqualify a Nigerian citizen from celebrating a national achievement? You then manufacture an imaginary scenario about cameras and what Obi supposedly would have done, and proceed to treat your speculation as established fact. Is this really your standard of intellectual analysis? And your argument that the coach is a public servant makes your position even more ridiculous. Since when does public service mean partisan servitude? Public institutions belong to Nigerians, not to Tinubu or whichever political party happens to control the federal government. Nobody is arguing that Peter Obi has an automatic right to interrupt the team's activities. He requested permission and, by his own account, respected the refusal. The question is whether political intimidation motivated that refusal. If officials genuinely feared losing their jobs simply because Peter Obi greeted Nigerian footballers, that is precisely the abuse of power you should be condemning, not rationalising. And this intellectually bankrupt argument about there being more important issues? Since when does the existence of bigger problems make smaller manifestations of authoritarian behaviour acceptable? By your reasoning, once a government becomes sufficiently disastrous, we should stop challenging its everyday abuses because there are bigger disasters to worry about. What a spectacularly absurd position. You've effectively argued that because the government might punish innocent officials for associating with an opposition politician, the opposition politician should accommodate the intimidation, while the public applauds the officials for complying. Do you even realise how dangerous that reasoning is? You have confused political intimidation with institutional professionalism, partisan discrimination with legitimate protocol, and capitulation to possible persecution with responsible conduct. And somehow, after all that, you conclude that Peter Obi is the one being unreasonable. Elnathan, you haven't demonstrated intellectual independence here. You've simply constructed an elaborate justification for an alleged abuse of power while pretending to occupy some morally superior, objective position. You are so determined to appear reasonable that you have ended up rationalising the very political intimidation you claim to oppose. Utterly disappointing.