2023 Presidency: Obasanjo Supporting Obi – Akin Osuntokun

A former aide of ex- president Olusegun Obasanjo and a Labour Party chieftain, Akin Osuntokun, has stated that LP presidential candidate, Peter Obi enjoys the support of the former president.

Osuntokun, who is the South West coordinator of Obi’s campaign, made this disclosure during an interview with Arise TV on Friday.

He dismissed the presidential tickets of both the All Progressive Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as inconsistent with Obasanjo’s ideal of national unity and fairness saying that the South East region must produce Nigeria’s next president as a matter of conscience.

“There must be rotation of power to the south and specifically to the South East, it’s a matter of conscience, it will be wrong for another northern Fulani Muslim to replace Buhari and I think there is something quite objectionable about that. The APC suffered a similar ailment with the Muslim-Muslim ticket, so those two tickets are like an option between the rock and a hard place, there is nothing to choose between them and they are coming with the specific baggage of crass insensitivity toward building a country. In terms of taking Nigeria forward, there is no way the tickets of both the APC and PDP come near to that of the Labour Party.

“I’m not going to commit him (Obasanjo), but without prejudice to other people, whoever adopts a certain position on Nigeria unity, knows that the two other candidates are antithetical, there is no way anybody can seriously talk about Nigerian unity and integration and see any value in PDP and APC. They contradict that aspiration.

“So I’m using that to tell you that I know Obasanjo’s position on Nigeria, he is likely going to have preference or sympathy for that party whose ticket is consistent with that aspiration of national unity and integration, so to that extent, we surely know.

“If you also look at what he has been saying, in the past few years about the situation in Nigeria, we can also see consistency from that behaviour to supporting somebody like Obi.”

Asked specifically if Obasanjo is supporting Peter Obi, Osuntokun said “I think so.”

The LP chieftain also weighed in on President Muhammadu Buhari’s seeming uninterest in the presidential campaign of the APC there is no impression that the president backs Tinubu.

“Atiku and Tinubu are contesting for the same political constituency, the priority of the Muslim north and we don’t get the impression that the president particularly supports this APC ticket, he didn’t have a hand in the nomination of who became their party’s candidate, and even when the presidential candidate emerged and approached the president to nominate a running mate for him, and Buhari said ‘No, whoever you pick as running mate would enjoy my 100% support’.

“The only explanation for that is that he is disinterested, in reality, that’s a demonstration of hostility to that ticket. How can a sitting president say that I’m not interested in who the presidential candidate of my party is, I’m not interested in who the vice-presidential candidate is? This is against the background in which the same president made a specific request to the governors that he wants reciprocity in getting who to succeed him like the governors have in picking their successors. How can the same person within the space of two or three weeks say I’m no longer interested in who becomes the presidential or the vice-presidential candidate, even in the US, I doubt if you can see any sitting president that is not interested in who succeeds him, it may not be as crass as our own here,” he added.