Presidential hopeful and opposition leader Peter Obi has declared that the northern region of Nigeria will celebrate his leadership if elected president in 2027. Speaking on Sunday Politics, the 2023 Labour Party flagbearer and key member of the newly formed opposition coalition under the African Democratic Congress (ADC) emphasized that the North holds the key to Nigeria’s prosperity, with vast untapped potential in arable land and population. However, he lamented that insecurity has crippled development in the region. “If I am president, the North will celebrate me. I have an idea of the problem,” Obi said.
Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, challenged Nigerians to shift from voting based on ethnicity and religion to prioritizing competence and compassion. “We have voted for incompetence, we’ve voted for tribe, we’ve voted for religion; let’s vote for competence,” he urged. He promised to be a president who truly cares about the people’s welfare, pledging to tackle the root causes of northern insecurity and fully harness the region’s economic potential. According to Obi, fixing insecurity and boosting agriculture in the North would transform Nigeria’s fortunes.
He also took a swipe at President Bola Tinubu for what he described as a lack of empathy in moments of national tragedy. Obi referenced Tinubu’s decision to spend Christmas in Lagos in December 2024 instead of visiting Ibadan, where several children died in a stampede. “There is no compassion; people lost their children… and he went on a Christmas holiday,” Obi said. He further criticised Tinubu’s response to deadly attacks in Benue State, saying the president failed to visit the worst-hit area of Yelwata, citing bad roads and floods—an explanation Obi dismissed as inadequate.
