Former Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Mr Peter Obi, stands like a zebra surrounded by lions, as he is sequestered by a crisis of choice of platform to compete in the 2027 general election cycle, LEO SOBECHI reports.
Which party did he tell you he was going to run for the 2027 presidential poll? That was the clever retort by the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mr Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, to broadcast journalists while featuring in a monthly media briefing, Monday, September 1.
Wike had shot back when confronted with Mr Obi’s observations about the recent Local Government council poll held in Rivers State, where the FCT Minister led his ground political troops on both the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and embattled Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to regain control of the political cum electoral structures of the oil-rich Niger Delta state.
Expressing obvious frustrations about Obi’s nebulous choice of platform, Wike noted that unless on social media, the former LP presidential contender has not told anybody which party he would stand in the 2027 election, stressing that his supporters ought to know that very position by now.
Doubting that Obi could repeat his 2023 feat in 2027, the FCT Minister declared, “Where will he get the six million votes? Under the PDP or Labour Party? If you are running, people should know for which party you are running. They should know the platform. Is it by December that he will mention it? Atiku has said he will run in the ADC, Amaechi said ADC, but he (Obi) has not said where he will run.
“Why are you keeping your supporters guessing?” Wike asked rhetorically. Without admitting it, Wike appeared to echo the growing confusion and frustration that Mr Obi’s plans for 2027 were subjecting his opponents. Prior to Wike’s perspectives on Mr Obi’s ambivalent and dangling positions on both the troubled LP, PDP and the coalition opposition platform of ADC, the immediate past Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, had dismissed Obi’s offer to serve a one term mandate if elected as President in 2027, saying that nobody believes such offers, which possibilities exist for its breach.
After the 2023 election, the electoral performance of the former LP’s standard bearer surprised the fold of established politicians, including the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who nominated him as his running mate for the 2019 presidential contest.
Watchers of the post-2023 presidential election politics claim that Atiku moved to engineer the coalition of opposition elements after the Supreme Court affirmed President Tinubu as the winner of the election, as a ploy to set up an alternative platform to the PDP upon which he previously contested unsuccessfully for the top job.
Such notions gained credibility recently, when the National Executive Committee (NEC) of PDP officially announced that the party would be looking towards the South to select its presidential standard bearer for the 2027 contest. No sooner than the zoning format was confirmed that the former Vice President declared his intention to seek the ticket to contest against President Tinubu again in the next election.
Apart from announcing his desire to contest the 2027 presidential poll, Obi had informed his supporters that he was participating in the coalition to fight against insecurity, hunger and bad governance in the country. He told journalists in Abuja that he was not desperate to be President, but desperate to see Nigeria work. He, also, told his close allies that he would not like to go into primary electoral struggle with Atiku out of deference to the former Vice President.
It was learnt that Obi’s offer to serve for just one term in office was also in a bid to convince the northern political elite, who are itching to have a go at the presidency in 2031, to support his aspiration. But, knowing the cult like following the former LP presidential runner enjoys among the young voters, particularly the brassy Obidient Movement, the offer to complete the four remaining years of the Presidency in the South seems not to be cutting any ice among the northern political influencers.
While the situation in ADC remains fluid, the troubled PDP started making overtures to the former Anambra State governor, urging him to return to the party and actualise his presidential ambition, especially given that the party had already zoned the ticket to the South. Meanwhile, it was gathered that the Nyesom Wike tendencies in the PDP are not very receptive to the likelihood of Obi’s return to the party for the presidential contest.
Against the background of contrived schemes to deny Obi access to the three promising political platforms for the 2027 tournament, his former running mate in the 2023 poll, Senator Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, counselled Obi to quit his involvement in the coalition on the ADC platform, saying that he smells a grand plot of deception against him.
Appearing on a Channels Television programme, Politics Today, Senator Baba-Ahmed had picked holes in the coalition arrangement. He declared: “They are deceiving us. I am a Labour Party man, for God’s sake. I am Peter Obi’s man. I still want Peter Obi to come back to the Labour Party and contest in 2027.”
The former LP deputy presidential candidate noted that all that Obi needed with the massive momentum his ambition has generated in the polity was a credible electoral process, pointing out that the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must demonstrate competence and credibility.”
“Electoral fraud is right now the most important fact to be addressed in our lives as a nation, even beyond insecurity. Insecurity is derived from electoral fraud. Corruption is aggravated by the kind of electoral fraud that we have,” he maintained.
In the lead-up to the 2027 presidential election, therefore, some players on the two platforms of PDP and ADC pose as the major setbacks to Mr Peter Obi’s inclusion in those platforms for the contest.
ADC: From top to bottom
THE perceived holdup against Obi’s participation in the ADC presidential primary, the following leading opposition figures could be considered as the strategic opponents to zoning the ticket to the South and by extension, to the former LP standard bearer:
Atiku Abubakar
FORMER Vice President has been contesting the presidential election since 1992. Quoting former President Olusegun Obasanjo, some stakeholders said the former Vice President believes in the prediction of his clerics that he is destined to be Nigeria’s leader. Also, a former Plateau State governor, Fidelis Tapgun, disclosed that Atiku has the backing of retired military officers who have been urging him on in his presidential ambition since 2002.
Penultimate week, the former Vice President came out to declare his interest in the 2027 presidential election, stressing that the current state of Nigeria’s political economy requires an experienced hand to pilot the ship of state.
Abubakar’s announcement threw a cold blanket on Obi’s possible participation, given the former LP candidate’s avowals not to drag ticket with his former principal and respected elder. Sources in ADC told The Guardian that subscribers to the ADC coalition fear that Atiku’s interest may jeopardise the political reforms envisaged by the party.
Atiku’s declaration to run further proves sceptics right that his ambition would repeat the damage it wrought in PDP, especially against the background of growing calls from younger northern politicians like Governor Bala Mohammed that the former Vice President should take a deserved rest after many attempts to become Nigeria’s number one.
David Mark
THE acting national chairman and former President of the Senate, Mark, is known as a long-standing acolyte of the former military President, General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB), right from their days in active military service. During the public presentation of his Memoir, ‘A Journey In Service’, the former military ruler, Babangida, commended President Tinubu for his political skills and leadership of the country, stressing that Nigeria was in good hands.
There are small talks in Abuja that the former military president is tactfully working for President Tinubu’s re-election. Discreet searches reveal that although IBB seems to be backing Atiku, he has not forgiven the former Vice President for orchestrating the search for a consensus northern candidate to confront the then President Goodluck Jonathan for the PDP ticket for the 2011 presidential poll.
It was gathered that Atiku programmed the then Adamu Ciroma-led committee to defeat Babangida, Bukola Saraki and a former National Security Adviser (NSA), Aliu Gusau. A source privy to the controversial pre-selection of a potential northern challenger against Jonathan said that although IBB took the outcome with equanimity, he has hidden his internal revulsion with military straight face.
As IBB’s man, it could not be readily ascertained if Senator David Mark would be used as a pawn to requite Atiku, while unwittingly serving IBB’s interest in Tinubu’s second term. Insiders recall Major Mark’s effective implementation of the abandoned property policy when he served as the chairman of the panel that oversaw the affairs of old Rivers State.
Rauf Aregbesola
FORMER Minister of Interior in the preceding Muhammadu Buhari administration, was formerly a loyal enforcer for President Tinubu in the Alimosho area of Lagos State. One of the trusted foot soldiers of the President on the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola mounted at the back of President Tinubu to serve two terms as governor of Osun State. But, he fell out with the incumbent President when he teamed up with other members of Buhari’s inner circle to sideline Tinubu in the then-President’s succession plan.
Although Aregbesola does not subscribe to money politics like Obi, insiders believe that the acting National Secretary of ADC does not consider Obi for the party’s ticket. It was learnt that the former Vice President was instrumental in Aregbesola’s involvement in the coalition arrangement. “To that extent, you can be sure that there is no way Aregbe would side with Obi instead of Atiku to fight his former boss,” said an ADC chieftain from the South-West.
Abubakar Malami
THE former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Malami, like Aregbesola, is a fanatical supporter of Atiku. In fact, findings by The Guardian revealed that the former AGF and his group worked for Atiku’s electoral chances in Kebbi during the 2023 presidential poll. That obvious anti-party play, in addition to President Tinubu’s grudge against the former Justice Minister, combined to inform his decision to drag the splinter of the former members of the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), in APC into the coalition ADC.
In the ongoing schemes for the ADC presidential ticket, it was reliably gathered that Malami favours Atiku over Obi, particularly for his calculations that Atiku’s candidacy would propel him towards an easy defeat of Governor Nasir Idris in the 2027 Kebbi State gubernatorial poll.
Rotimi Amaechi
THE immediate past Transportation Minister in the Buhari cabinet and former Rivers State governor believes that he lost the APC presidential ticket to Tinubu in 2002 due to the interplay of Vice Presidential aspirations of some second-term northern governors and deep pockets of the eventual winner of the ticket.
Amaechi regained his political voice after joining the opposition coalition in the belief that the fact that his zone, South/South, has served just one constitutional term in the office of President places him at a very advantageous position to buy the support of northern political elite yearning for the return of the presidency in the shortest time possible.
In the effort to escape the anti-Igbo sentiments, the former Transportation minister disclaimed his earlier identification as Igbo, stressing that he claimed to be Igbo in solidarity against the ethnic profiling of Igbo.
PDP: The more you look…
DESPITE PDP’s zoning of the presidential ticket to the South, the party presents more questions than answers for Mr Peter Obi in the search for a credible national platform to ventilate his presidential run in 2027.
Recall that Obi veered off the PDP to the LP, where he netted the party’s presidential standard for the 2023 poll. That was after Atiku was said to have informed him that it was not possible to choose him again as a running mate. Believing that gifting Atiku the party’s ticket in 2023 was a gross error of political judgment, the PDP NEC boldly affirmed the party’s readiness to right the 2023 wrong by looking towards the South in the search for its flagbearer for 2027.
The party weaves the public impression that the zoning favours Obi’s aspiration, even when it stopped short of micro-zoning to the South-East. Yet, PDP’s failure to scorch the remains of division that imperilled the party’s participation in the 2023 election stands as a hollow bargain offer for the former Anambra State governor.
Over and above those salient contradictions, Wike’s allies, including the outgoing national secretary, Senator Sam Daddy Anyanwu, Hon Kingsley Chinda and Philip Aduda, are ready to stand in obedience of the FCT Minister’s designs that PDP would not be available for the leader of the Obidient Movement to cause some troubles in the South for President Tinubu’s re-election plan. “So, he goes where he likes and when we have finished working, he comes back, because he’s a saint and there is nobody in PDP,” the FCT Minister stated, implying that PDP is not available for Obi.
There are bold hints in the party that Governor Seyi Makinde’s presidential aspiration is, apart from filling the vacuum, intended to do a deal with the incumbent President for the former G5’s immediate future political interests.
So, as the 2027 competition draws near, whichever way Mr Peter Obi turns, there is a literal ‘No-Way’ boldly inscribed on embedded political structures against the former LP standard bearer.
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“In the lead up to the 2027 presidential election, therefore, some players on the two platforms of PDP and ADC pose as the major setbacks to Mr Peter Obi’s inclusion in those platforms for the contest.”
