Former Spokesperson of the Obi/Datti presidential campaign council, Kenneth Okonkwo, has said the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, is the main opposition of the present administration and for the 2027 general elections.
Okonkwo said this on Tuesday during an interview on Arise News.
According to Okonkwo, Nigerians bought into Peter Obi’s seven-point agenda and now he identifies as the one who knows what Nigerians want, so, he is the main opposition, as well as his party.
He said, “Taking you back to the times of the campaign, you would remember that Peter Obi was the one that crafted the seven-point agenda that all these other parties are copying from, howbeit, doing a terrible job out of it. You remember, he was the one who came out as a candidate and defended his seven-point agenda, which included, securing and uniting Nigeria, production-centred growth for self-sufficiency and export, he talked about effective and efficient legal and institutional reform to ensure: one, cutting out wastage in government; two, reducing cost of governance, preventing corruption and importantly, building an honest and efficient civil service, he talked about leap frogging Nigeria out of oil dependency to the fourth industrial revolution and human capital development, and expanding physical infrastructure and robust foreign policy, if you check all these people now, the presidential candidates, you will discover that they were simply copying from him without learning the route that he wanted to achieve all these things.
“Apart from his knowing exactly what he wanted, he had the commensurate competence, capacity and character to drive it which is lacking in all these people and Nigerians bought into that particular agenda of his, that’s why he’s the only person that scored 25% in all the six geopolitical zones, including the federal capital territory, none of the candidates won more states than he did, even with their allocated results by INEC.
“So, you discover, that’s why he’s saying ‘I know Nigerians, I know what nigerians want. We, now, are the effective opposition party’.”
Recall that, the Independent National Electoral Commission had declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressive Congress the winner of the 2023 presidential election after polling a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party, who scored 6,984,520 to emerge second, while Peter Obi of the Labour Party polled 6,101,533 votes to come distant third.
Nearly 90 million people were eligible to vote in Africa’s largest democracy, with many Nigerians hoping a new leader will do a better job tackling insecurity, economic malaise and growing poverty.
Elections were held nationwide on February 25. Voting had to be extended into Sunday in a few parts of the country after some glitches.
