Politics

Peter Obi: I’m pan Nigeria, not Igbo candidate

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has lashed out at those referring to his candidature as ‘Igbo presidency’.

Obi, in a statement issued on Tuesday by the Obi-Datti media office, said he is not “an Igbo candidate but a Pan Nigeria candidate on a divine mission to reset Nigeria.”

A pastor at the Awaiting the Second Coming of Christ Ministry, Adewale Giwa, had said “a person of ethnic Igbo cannot be President of Nigeria unless all ethnic nationalities go their way.”

Also, the vice-presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Sen. Kashim Shettima, said Obi can only become a President in Igboland “but definitely not in Nigeria because Nigeria is too big for him to handle”.

Shettima, while speaking on a television programme in July, added: “The presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi has no political base and structure to win the next election in 2023. As far as I am concerned, he’s politically structureless with little or no experience to lead this country.

However, the media office of the LP presidential candidate, on Tuesday, said: “The mission of the Obident political movement is therefore to destroy all the existing primordial reasonings that have been holding us down and reposition the country for true greatness.

“Obi is not aspiring to be President of Nigeria in the old order where tribe and religion are abused and manipulated for selfish purposes by few individuals to hold Nigeria down.

“Nigerian youths who are at the forefront across all ethnic and religious divide projecting Obi-Datti candidacy have been victims of this obnoxious system and decided this time to put an end to it by taking their destiny in their own hands.

“The Obident Movement is not a Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani or any ethnic group or Christian or Muslim project, it’s Nigerian people driven deciding that enough is enough,” the statement partly read.

The Star