2023: Photo capturing emotion, passion for Peter Obi goes viral on social media

A photo of Peter Obi campaigning in Lagos, south-west Nigeria, has sent a wave of excitement among Nigerians on Twitter.

The Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, with a soaring popularity among Nigerian youth, campaigned in Lagos on Saturday for the 25 February election.

The photo, which trended on Twitter on Saturday, captured a young man standing in front of Mr Obi’s open-roof SUV, with his arms wide open.

Mr Obi, who stood out through the open roof of the vehicle, was smiling at the young man.

Ecstatic supporters surrounded the candidate’s convoy as they drove through the crowd.

Many Nigerians excitedly liked and retweeted the photo. Some declared it their picture of the year, while one man said it has become his phone’s wallpaper.

“When Pain meets Hope,” a Twitter user, @OtuekongCosmas, said of the photo.

“Still the love money can’t buy,” another Twitter user, @RealKingBona, said.

A twitter user, @DikeDanielEmeka, went poetic with his thoughts on the photo, which he said represents the sweat, desire, appeal, embrace, and presidential coolness.

This is “The Unspoken Communication. This is the Orgasm Moment. The Surrender. The Warmth. The Love,” he wrote on the microblogging site.

The young man, who identified himself as Yusuf Alami, said he is from Ibadan in Oyo State but lives in Lagos. He said he stood in front of Mr Obi’s convoy because of the love he has for the LP candidate.

Apparently wowed by the photo, a Twitter user announced a donation of N100,000 for Yusuf.

“How can I get to this boy? I want to gift him 100K. It’s youth o’clock. I see hope for common persons coming back again,” said the man, who also promised to buy a smartphone for the boy.

“He needs to be online to see Peter Obi wins,” he added.

Esther Umoh, a photographer and a poet, who appears to be working for Mr Obi’s campaign, going by the many photos she uploaded on her Facebook page, shot the viral photo.

Mr Obi enjoys a great following, especially among young Nigerians who believe he has the sincerity and capacity to tackle the myriads of Nigeria’s problems.

However, two of his major opponents – Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party – said the LP candidate does not have the political structure to win the presidential election.

“The structure they have today is what we want to dismantle. It is a structure of criminality,” Mr Obi said recently in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

“It is the structure that produced 133 million people living in poverty, 20 million out-of-school children, and made Nigeria surpass India in infant mortality.

“It is the structure that destroys us and we want to destroy that structure. And you are the next structure. We want to build a better place for our children,” he added.