By ‘Fisayo Soyombo
Oby Ezekwesili’s withdrawal from the presidential race is a remarkable act of courage. It doesn’t matter what reasons you adduce for the action. I’ll explain why; but, before then, some introduction.
By nature, activists are idealistic people. They’re on a permanent search for perfection that rarely exists; sometimes — just once in a blue moon — they succeed. But most times, they don’t.
They are usually so consumed by their passion for a just and prosperous society that they focus on the end rather than the means to it; they usually concentrate all their attention on the prize, not the price. And that’s the one, perhaps only, 2019-election foible from which Ezekwesili cannot extricate herself.
By the way, I do not blame her for this idealism that prompted her entry into the race. I would never blame anyone for wanting something and taking a legitimate step towards actualising it, regardless of whether they can have it, whether they end up having it or whether they’re qualified to have it. If you try and you win, congratulations! If you try and you lose, you learn.
On the contrary, though, I would blame anyone for wanting something, and not trying, for the sole fear of losing. At the end of the day, even if you lived 100 years, you would wake up on your 99th birthday realising that life is really short. So, why not spend that short life chasing any dream you might have?
Therefore, if Oby withdrew because she finally reached a point where she could tell herself the truth that she wouldn’t win, that’s courage — not cowardice, not chickening out. It takes enormous courage to admit ‘wrong’ in one’s estimation of one’s chances of winning an election.
If Oby indeed withdrew to support a consensus candidate, that’s courage as well — regardless of whether she would have polled 10,000 votes or 1million votes.
Oby’s party, APCN, claims she knew she wouldn’t win but only wanted to be Finance Minister; I know for a fact that this is not true. And, reading in between the lines, an APCN that has now formally endorsed the same Buhari it wanted to displace from office cannot boast a millionth of Oby’s integrity.
As Oby must now have learnt, party politics — be it PDP, APC or APCN — is largely dirty.