In my article to mark Obi’s 65th birthday, titled “The Odd Quirks of Peter Obi at Sixty-Five,” I tried to recall some of his unusual habits, instinctive reactions and characteristic sayings. I began with Plutarch, who, in the preamble to his”Life of Alexander”, wrote: “I am writing biography, not history; and the most brilliant exploits do not always manifest a man’s virtue or vice so well as a slight thing, a word or a jest, which often tells us more of his character than a siege where ten thousand die.”
That was the spirit in which I tried to capture some of the seemingly insignificant details that, in their own way, reveal the character of Peter Obi.
On Friday, after his broadcast signalling the commencement of electioneering, he was in a particularly light mood. It was one of those moments when one could introduce even the silliest of topics, and he would happily engage with them.
We were discussing the death of three priests in Awka, which led to the mention of names such as Senator Ifeanyi Ubah. I said it must have been exhaustion. Mr Obi said it was more likely stress because he had been so busy and had travelled every few days without adequate rest.
At this point, somebody reminded him that he knew what stress could cause and yet he himself travelled from country to country, city to city, town to town and from one function to another, while barely sleeping at night.
Obi then said something quite remarkable: the need for everybody to understand his or her own body constitution – what the body can take and what it cannot.
He then used his time in business as an example.
His words were:
“When I was in business, my day usually started at 6 a.m. It was straight from Morning Mass to the office. My brother, who was with me, usually started at 10 a.m. I would stay in the office till 7 p.m., while my brother would leave at 4 or 5 p.m. to Apapa Club. Everybody lived according to what suited him.
“But that my brother, Ndibe, is a Jackey.” metaphorically for a donkey – someone exceptionally hardworking, able to carry a heavy workload and keep going without tiring. “ If you want this building to be pulled down, he would do it without looking at others. Six hours he would be in the office, but those were six quality hours, and he would achieve what would take others two days to achieve.
“From Apapa Club, he would call to tell me how good the chicken or whatever was. I would still be in the office, and he would dispatch the chicken to me.”
Regrettably, a call came in and interrupted the conversation. It lasted long enough for us not to return to the subject.
Perhaps, in the spirit of Plutarch, this little conversation is worth recording. It was not a major political discussion or a profound policy conversation. Yet, in a few minutes, Obi revealed something about his philosophy of life: that we are not all constituted alike, that we must understand our individual capacities and limitations, and that productivity is not necessarily measured by the number of hours one spends at work but by what one accomplishes with those hours.
If you want to complete the sentence in the same sharp style:
This is the problem we have in Nigeria today. President Bola Tinubu has, with adamantine consistency, refused to admit his limitations and the fact that he is not fit to become or remain the President of Nigeria.
There is, perhaps, no greater wisdom in leadership than knowing oneself: understanding one’s strengths, recognising one’s limitations, and knowing when the demands of an office exceed one’s capacity. Leadership is not merely about the desire to occupy an office; it is also about having the humility to recognise whether one is capable of discharging the responsibilities that come with it.
This is precisely what makes Peter Obi’s observation so striking. He was speaking about the body, but the principle extends beyond physical constitution to leadership itself: every person must know what he can take, what he cannot take, and what he is capable of delivering.