Africa’s most populous nation goes to the polls on Saturday (25 February) to elect a new president. One candidate, Peter Obi, who appears to have become the front runner, has captured the imagination of the western media.
Obi, 61, the leader of the Nigerian Labour Party, has pitched himself as a fresh-faced progressive and outsider who will clean up the muck of Nigerian politics and build a fairer, more just nation. The country’s youth – a powerful voting bloc in a country where around two-thirds of the population of 213 million is under the age of 30 – appear to be on Obi’s side and, if you read election coverage in the international press, you might get the impression that Nigeria is on the verge of a bright new era. But is Obi really Nigeria’s saviour, or is this simply a media mirage?
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