- Bayo Onanuga, President Bola Tinubu’s special adviser on information and strategy, fired back at Peter Obi after his Channels TV interview on Sunday
- Onanuga challenged Obi’s comparison of his party movements to President Tinubu’s political career, laying out a detailed rebuttal
- The presidential aide also took aim at Obi’s continued insistence that he was rigged out of the 2023 presidential election
Bayo Onanuga, the special adviser to President Bola Tinubu on information and strategy, has criticised Peter Obi, the 2027 presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), describing his appearance on Channels TV on Sunday as a “PR disaster” that was riddled with falsehoods.
Onanuga said he switched off the programme after watching for roughly 30 minutes, and then proceeded to address two specific claims Obi made during the interview with presenter Seun Okinbaloye.
Obi’s party movements vs Tinubu’s political career
The first point of contention arose when Okinbaloye pressed Obi on his record of switching parties. Obi, in response, suggested his movement between parties was no different from what Tinubu had done throughout his political career. Onanuga flatly rejected the comparison.
According to Onanuga, Tinubu has maintained a consistent ideological path since entering party politics in the early 1990s. He traced Tinubu’s journey from the Social Democratic Party, through the Alliance for Democracy, the Action Congress, the Action Congress of Nigeria, and eventually into the All Progressives Congress following a merger in 2013 with parties including the Congress for Progressive Change and the New Peoples Democratic Party. Onanuga argued that each transition was part of a broader effort to build and consolidate a progressive political movement, not personal opportunism.
By contrast, Onanuga said Obi abandoned the All Progressives Grand Alliance after his second term as governor, despite swearing he would never leave, then joined the Peoples Democratic Party and ran as Atiku Abubakar’s running mate in 2019. After that defeat, Obi left for the Labour Party, contested the 2023 presidential election, and came third. He then departed without resolving a leadership crisis within the party, including questions over unaccounted campaign funds. Onanuga added that Obi subsequently teamed up with Atiku to move into the African Democratic Congress before eventually landing at the NDC, a party he described as being promoted by former governor Senator Seriake Dickson.
“You do not build; you always want to reap where you did not sow,” Onanuga wrote.
Obi’s refusal to accept 2023 election defeat
The second issue Onanuga raised concerned the outcome of the 2023 presidential election. When Okinbaloye asked Obi directly whether he believed he had been rigged out, Obi said he did. Onanuga said he was “utterly surprised” that more than three years after the Supreme Court dismissed Obi’s petition, Obi still refuses to accept the result.
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Onanuga acknowledged that Obi’s showing in the 2023 election was creditable for a candidate with limited political structures outside of social media support. However, he maintained that the result was clear: Obi lost and came third.
“Mr Obi, it is time you accepted the stark reality of the loss. Stop dreaming of a victory that you never had,” Onanuga wrote.
Source: Legit.ng
