Peter Obi, a man who carries his own suitcases, could be Nigeria’s next president

case of Goliath and David,” says Peter Obi, a long-shot candidate who has unexpectedly taken the lead in the race to become president of Africa’s most populous country. “The big people are there, but allow this small person to do it. And I know I can do it.”As public campaigning was about to begin in late September, Nigeria was rocked by the release of three polls showing Mr Obi well ahead of the two candidates for the main parties that have misruled Nigeria since the restoration of its democracy in 1999. In two of the polls Mr Obi has a lead of more than 15 percentage points over Bola Tinubu of the incumbent All Progressives Congress () and Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (), the main opposition. What makes this even more extraordinary is that Mr Obi is standing for the Labour Party, whose candidate at the previous presidential election in 2019 won just 5,074 votes out of 28m cast.