Nigeria: Mystery Letter Hits Top Christian Presidential Candidate with Church Bribery Smear

Presidential candidate of Labour Party Peter Obi looks on during the party campaign rally
PIUS UTOMI EKPEI / AFP
John Hayward

Peter Obi, the only Christian among the four front-running candidates for president of Nigeria in the election to be held on February 25, has been accused of bribing churches to mobilize turnout. Obi denounced the allegations as “cheap blackmail” spread by his adversaries to force him out of the race.

The allegations surfaced in a letter whose alleged writer, Pastor Frank Onwumere, denied writing. The organization the letter claimed Onwumere represents does not appear to exist.

Obi has, in fact, emerged as the leading candidate to succeed incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari in three polls taken over the past week. Obi ran nine or ten percent ahead of his closest competitors in those polls, while his Labor Party scored over 50 percent support. Analysts noted the polls included a large number of undecided respondents, so the race is still open.

Obi was considered an underdog candidate going into the high-stakes campaign. Nigeria’s economy is stagnant, ethnic and religious violence is rampant, and kidnapping is the fastest-growing industry in the country. Power has been held by two parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), for decades, making Obi’s third-party candidacy seem initially hopeless.

Obi generated some excitement by touting his business experience and his record as the successful two-term governor of Nigeria’s Anambra state, which underwent the kind of economic transformation many Nigerians would like to see nationwide under his leadership. 

Obi also made waves by eschewing the usual Nigerian practice of lining up ethnic political strongholds and squeezing them for votes by stoking their resentments. Instead, he campaigned across the country on a unity message, pointedly holding rallies in towns his opponents regarded as their locked-down home turf.

Like his leading rivals, Obi has been accused of corruption – in his case, his name cropped up in the 2021 Pandora Papers data leak as a holder of undisclosed offshore accounts – but he mitigated the political fallout by making a remarkable volume of his personal financial records public and apologizing for not offering greater transparency sooner.

Obi entered the homestretch of the presidential campaign as a viral sensation. His rallies across Nigeria swelled to enormous size, his promises of economic renewal are resonating with a country driven to destitution by Buhari’s insane policies, and his jocular stage presence is a hit with Nigerians weary of angry political leaders who demand they go to war with each other. His voters increasingly speak of not just supporting Obi, but loving him:

Last Saturday, as Obi’s convoy was rolling through Lagos, a teenage boy named Quadri Yusuf Alabi stepped in front of the presidential candidate’s car with his arms spread wide, as though offering him a hug. Obi popped up through the sunroof of his car to smile at the boy, and the resulting photograph went nuclear on Nigerian social media. 

When the public learned that Alabi dropped out of school to take care of his widowed mother, thousands of dollars in donations were made to his family in a matter of hours.

The bribery allegation against Obi may prove to be the last hurdle he needs to overcome. The charges were leveled in an online letter from a Christian pastor to the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) that said Obi’s Labor Party gave about $4.3 million to churches in exchange for their political support, and the votes of their congregations.

According to the complaining pastor, Frank Onwumere, the money doled out by the Labor Party has disappeared:

We are appalled and disappointed that such humongous amount of money was given to the church by the Labour party to help and assist in mobilizing and convincing their congregation to vote massively for the candidacy of Mr. Peter Obi but to our chagrin, the said sum of money has developed wings and cannot be traced, as we have it on good authority, that it has been fleeced by mega-churches and popular pastors and leaders who already as we write, are receiving the presidential candidate across the length and breadth of Nigeria without due consideration to other churches that have not received their own part of the funds.

The letter argued that even if the money had not been misappropriated, the payments would have gone against CAN policies and Nigerian laws governing political donations. He further claimed to have heard from smaller churches and “little-known pastors” who were angry none of the money was sent their way.

Nigerian reporters who investigated the letter said some of the phone numbers listed for pastors who could ostensibly support Onwumere’s complaint were out of service and found no evidence the organization Onwumere claimed to represent, Dominion Center International, actually exists.

Pastor Onwumere is a real person, but soon after the letter accusing Obi of bribery went viral, he released a statement that said he did not write or sign the document and had no allegations of bribery against Obi. 

“I am not a member of Dominion Centre International and have never had any relationship with the organization. The author of the petition is not known to me. Please be assured that it is not in my character to malign any person or institution, let alone revered religious bodies,” Onwumere said.

The office of CAN President Daniel Okoh said he had never seen the letter before it was leaked online. Okoh released a statement on Sunday that dismissed the letter as a fraud and promised an investigation of its origins. Obi also dismissed the allegations, insisting he did have the kind of money described by Onwumere to throw around.

“I believe that the clergymen also have a problem. Their followers are suffering so they want good governance. Why should I give them money? They should give me money to be able to support me in terms of being able to run around for my campaigns,” Obi said on Sunday.

“I can comfortably tell you that I have never given one Naira [Nigerian currency] to CAN and if anybody can prove that I gave one Naira to CAN, I will stop running,” he said.

Obi’s party released a statement on Sunday that denounced the letter as an act of “cheap extortion” from his “morally bankrupt” opponents.

“That is why we will continue to be amused by the desperation of some opponents to search for faults on the front-running presidential candidate of the Labor Party, Mr Peter Obi, and the apparent frustration of not finding any,” the statement taunted.

Obi’s opponents quickly seized on the letter as evidence of corruption and dishonesty, mocking the Labor Party’s claims of being above bribery. The candidate from Buhari’s APC party, Festus Keyamo, racked up 800,000 views in less than 24 hours for a tweet pushing the bribery allegations against Obi.

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