The Senior Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has criticised the interview granted by Nigeria Decomarcy Congress (NDC) presidential candidate Peter Obi on Sunday.
According to him, after watching the interview on Channels Television for about 30 minutes, “I wasted no time turning it off.”
Describing Obi as a political nomad, Onanuga stated that Obi believed the interview would re-energise his fading 2027 presidential ambition. “It turned out to be a PR disaster, judging from the spate of reactions to the many lies he referenced,” he said.
Highlighting two issues that caught his attention while watching the interview, Onanuga said, “First, when his interviewer, Seun Okinbaloye, questioned him about his political nomadism, he tried to make the question a non-issue, saying, with a smirk on his face, that he has not done anything different from what President Bola Tinubu has done in his political odyssey.
“No, Mr Obi. Tinubu has not been jumping from one ideologically different party to another. Since he joined party politics in 1991/92, Tinubu has remained on the progressive path. He started with the Social Democratic Party and won election to the Senate on the party’s platform, polling the highest number of votes ever secured by any candidate in the country.”
Onanuga recalled that when the June 12, 1993 election was annulled, Tinubu joined the struggle for its validation. He said Tinubu did not collaborate with the military; instead, he defied the junta, reconvened the National Assembly, joined protests, was detained, and, when the country became too dangerous, went into exile with his family, where he continued the struggle against military dictatorship.
He said that when Tinubu returned from exile in 1998, he joined the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and was elected governor of Lagos State in 1999.
“The AD, which Obasanjo wanted to decapitate, went into a factional crisis. Tinubu still won the 2003 governorship election under the INEC-recognised faction,” he said.
The presidential spokesman said that with the AD still in crisis, Tinubu founded the Action Congress (AC), taking many AD members to the new platform. Babatunde Fashola, Kayode Fayemi and Rauf Aregbesola contested on the platform in 2007.
The AC later became the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) ahead of the 2011 election. In 2013, the party entered merger talks with the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), and the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP) to form the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said Tinubu remained true to his ideological persuasion, stayed in the same political lane and never defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2003 after emerging as the only AD governor re-elected following what he described as President Olusegun Obasanjo’s brazen electoral manipulation.
“Instead, he built a new party from the bottom up, which has grown like an oak tree from an acorn,” he said.
“Tinubu is unlike you, Peter Obi. You were elected governor under the platform of APGA in 2006. You swore before your children and even at the hospital bedside of Ikemba Odumegwu Ojukwu that you would never leave the party. Yet, after completing your tenure, you abandoned APGA and joined the PDP.
“You were in the PDP when you ran with the perennial presidential contender and loser, Atiku Abubakar, in 2019.
“Your ticket lost to Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo of the APC. Rather than remain to rebuild the PDP, you pursued your personal ambition by joining the Labour Party. You contested as its presidential candidate in 2023 but lost the election, finishing third behind Atiku and President Bola Tinubu.
“The Labour Party descended into a leadership crisis after the election, with campaign funds in your possession yet to be fully accounted for. Instead of staying to resolve the crisis and rebuild the party into a formidable force, you again chose to leave. You teamed up with Atiku to take over the African Democratic Congress (ADC), a special-purpose political vehicle. When it became clear that you would not secure the party’s presidential ticket through a free and fair primary, you again moved to the court-registered National Democratic Congress (NDC), promoted by former Bayelsa State governor, Senator Seriake Dickson.
“It is not in doubt that if the NDC fails to deliver what you want, you will not hesitate to leave again. You do not build; you always want to reap where you did not sow.
“The second issue is that Seun gave you a golden opportunity to redeem yourself regarding the outcome of the 2023 election. You lost, Peter. You did not win that election. You came third and, if not for the bloc vote from your ethnic group, you would have finished a distant third.
“Seun asked you directly whether you believed you were rigged out. You fell into his trap by agreeing. You performed well in the election, no doubt—a politician with no nationwide structure apart from vocal supporters on X, Instagram and Facebook. But I was surprised that more than three years after the Supreme Court dismissed your petition, you are still in denial and continue to believe you won the election, echoing the sentiments of your followers.
“Mr Obi, it is time you accepted the reality of your defeat. Stop dreaming of a victory you never had,” Onanuga concluded.
