The Danger of Mistaking Symbols for Strategy

By Shiloh O Akinyemi

I read Chioma Amaryllis Ahaghotu’s piece with interest, not because it said something radically new, but because it bundled several distinct failures into one convenient villain. In her framing, Peter Obi’s humility is not humility at all but branding. Performance. A costume worn by a billionaire supposedly afraid of power.
That argument sounds bold until it is examined carefully.

Let me be clear. I am not a political activist or a party loyalist. I do not spend my days studying Nigerian political trends. More often than not, you will find me reading fiction, largely because I stopped believing in the Nigerian dream as it is currently packaged. So this is not a defense born of obsession. It is a response to weak reasoning dressed up as strategic realism.

The central claim is that Obi’s humility is performative, that it signals weakness, and that Nigerian politics is not a morality contest but chess played with knives. That framing sounds clever until you interrogate it.

The first problem is historical amnesia. The poverty or humility narrative did not begin with Peter Obi. Nigerian politics has been here before.
Goodluck Jonathan’s “I had no shoes” story was one of the most effective political symbols of its time. It was not accidental. It was a deliberate counter to an elite political culture defined by inherited privilege and visible excess. It communicated proximity. It said, I understand your struggle because I lived it. I am not an aristocrat. I am one of you.

Late President Buhari benefited from the same template. We were told concerned Nigerians bought his form. Integrity was sold again. Nigerians believed again. And yet, uncomfortable as it may be to admit, Nigeria’s economic structure under Jonathan was more stable than what followed under Buhari. Moral symbolism did not translate into institutional strength.

So when humility shows up in Nigerian politics, it is not novelty. It is a language voters themselves helped create. Candidates did not invent it in a vacuum. They responded to decades of resentment against untouchable opulence masquerading as authority.
This is why attacking Obi’s humility as uniquely performative misses the point. It is not a new costume. It is a familiar political dialect. If Nigerians are tired of it, then that fatigue is with a system of symbols we have collectively rewarded for years.
That said, dismissing humility as weakness is just as lazy as worshipping it.

The critique rests on a false binary, that wealth and humility cannot coexist, and that power must always announce itself through excess, intimidation, and spectacle. History does not support this.
You can build businesses, run banks, master supply chains, and still exercise restraint. In fact, restraint only has meaning when excess is available and deliberately refused. Poverty is not humility. Discipline is.

Calling consistency a performance does not make it so. Performance adapts to audience. Character does not. There is no evidence that Obi suddenly reinvented his lifestyle for presidential optics. What unsettles people is not inconsistency, but a form of power that refuses to shout.
The Abuja house argument is similarly hollow. Not owning a house in Abuja is not a moral medal. Nobody serious claims it is. But in a political environment where access routinely becomes entitlement, restraint in the face of opportunity is not ignorance. It is a choice. And choices matter in systems defined by abuse.

Where Chioma is right, though she does not fully land it, is that Nigerians are starving for systems, not saints. That much is true. But systems do not emerge from a moral vacuum. They are built by values before they are enforced by power. You cannot demand sacrifice from citizens while advertising indulgence at the top. Fiscal discipline is not cosmetic. It is foundational.
However, this is where the critique should have turned toward strategy, not character.

Peter Obi’s real problem is not humility. It is messaging relevance and political positioning. His team of strategists are not reading the room well enough. As Gen Z would say, the strategy is not giving.
I do not expect a presidential contender to be telling stories about washing toilets on a plane when Nigerians are asking urgent questions about insecurity, economic sabotage, and state capture. Humility is not the issue here. Context is. Timing is. Power communication matters.

After Tinubu took power in the manner he did, I expected Obi to remain firmly in Nigerians’ faces. I expected sustained opposition. Interrogation of policy. Pressure on appointments. Relentless questioning. Opposition is not silence softened by anecdotes. It is presence and pressure.
If Nigerians are mistaking humility for weakness, then that is not primarily a failure of personal conduct. It is a failure of political framing. It is a campaign failure. And if that misreading persists, then the entire campaign architecture deserves scrutiny.

This is why the fixation on “chess played with knives” is misleading. It romanticises dysfunction. It treats intimidation as inevitability and inevitability as strategy. We have tried that path. We are living with the consequences.
Force without discipline produces tyrants. Discipline without spectacle produces states.
Nigeria does not need leaders who own the room by consuming it. It needs leaders and movements that understand that power is responsibility, wealth is stewardship, and opposition must be intelligent, relentless, and system-focused.

So no, the solution is not for Peter Obi to drop humility and cosplay ruthlessness. The solution is for his political project to mature. To match moral clarity with strategic aggression. To speak policy, execution, and institutional reform with the same consistency it speaks restraint.
Humility is not the enemy of power. Poor strategy is.
And if that distinction is uncomfortable, perhaps the real issue is not Peter Obi’s lifestyle, but how shallow our collective imagination of power has become.

At the end of the day, many of us will still chant “this government will favour me and my family,” clinging to false optimism while battling insecurity, displacement, and slow national decay until the next election cycle reminds us, again, that symbols are not systems.

Shiloh O. Akinyemi, fondly called ShillyPepper, is a writer, book reviewer, and social commentator with a deep passion for literature, faith, and social justice. She curates book recommendations and literary conversations through The Book Chef, where she amplifies Christian fiction and thought-provoking narratives.

A keen observer of society, Shiloh uses her voice to question power, challenge injustice, and advocate for accountability. When she’s not writing, she’s usually lost in a book or exploring ways to spark meaningful conversations around faith, culture, and public life.
She can be reached at akinshiloh1@gmail.com.