We believe the President-Elect could have performed better tactically even though Peter Obi, the presidential candidate for the Labour Party, gave him a hard time.
Peter has a bright future if he and his Party go back to the drawing board and heal the fractures in the party and put correct processes in place because he was able to poll 6,101,533 against the President-8,794,726. elect’s
30% of the more than 80 million eligible voters actually cast ballots, which is the lowest turnout since 1999.
For being able to advance in a hot state like Lagos and even defeat Tinubu, who served as governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2007, Peter must be applauded from the rear.
Our analysis on why Peter lost
Any Presidential Candidate poised to go into an election and win will make sure that all seats are contested for by his party.
The benefits of this is that, you get people(House and Senate Candidates and his Team) on grounds to campaign for you in your absence. These same people will help resolve issues so that party faithful will be happy in campaigning.
Secondly, these are the people (Candidates for House and Senate) you will be working with should you win the election, so it will be good to get more of your people in the House and in the Senate to help you succeed.
The Labour Party failed here because out of 109 seats in the Senate, Peter Obi’s Labour Party had only 80 candidates contesting which gives a deficit of 29 seats here.
Again, out of 360 in the House of Representatives, his party had only 208 candidates contesting. Again a deficit of 152 seats which is unacceptable.
So even if Peter Obi had won the Presidential election, he would not have had the numbers from both the Senate and the House of Representatives to run his Government.
The bottom line is Peter wasn’t well cooked to win.
To add to these analysis, there were pockets of misunderstanding among the Labour Party in the North and the National Executives including the Presidenial Candidate, Mr Obi.
The chairmen in the North felt marginalised in everything the Party does to the extent of claiming that they never received any funds when the Party is disbursing funds to Executives and alleged that disbursement was done based on tribe.
This was said barely 48 hours to voting during a press conference led by Sani Abdulsalam, the Gombe state Labour Party chairman and co-ordinating chairman for the 36 states.
“As of tonight, no alert has been received by any state chairmen and information reaching us confirmed that money was paid based on ethnic and religious consideration because only persons of a particular ethnic group currently run the campaign of Mr. Peter Obi in cohort with the national chairman, Mr. Julius Abure, has polluted the party.”
Accompanied by Mohammed Alkali, the national vice chairman, northeast, Ibrahim Bukar, the Yobe state chairman, amongst others, the leader of LP states chairmen alleged that money meant for the mobilisation of polling agents was withheld by the national chairman, Julius Abure.
“I speak on behalf of 36 state chairmen of our party in my capacity as the coordinating chairman. We have never been respected by the party leadership and also our presidential candidate has no respect for our party executives at state levels because Peter Obi deliberately mismanaged our good will with the imposition of his members and other support groups that decamped with him in May 2022 to our party”.
“To our surprise, the national chairman Julius Abure said the presidential candidate Peter Obi has no confidence in all the 36 state chapters’ leadership but would rather choose to work with their cronies and support group that came with him”.
As members of the Labour Party National Executive and National Working Committee (NWC), it is our considered opinion and informed conclusion that Peter Obi cannot win this election since all party executives have been sidelined. He is not ready and is grossly ill-prepared for the Presidential race.”
Why should it be so when you have a running mate who is from the North? This running mate was supposed to pull his region along no matter what the grievancesaid are. He should be a unifier and not just to occupy space.
This clearly means Mr. Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed failed his Boss Peter and his Party in this regard.
Peter Obi
Peter Obi, a business man, a Banker and a politician. He was the governor of the Anambera State and became the running mate to Atiku Abubakar in the 2019 election but broke away. He is now the leader of Labour Party. He seems to have galvanized enough support from the youth and alot of entertainers. He has always maintained that it’s time for Nigerians to take their Country back. The youth believed he is the one to break the APC and PDP jinx and bring in new style of governance which will be people centered. Many people say he is a Nollywood president and will remain so.
We believe that, Mr Peter Obi stands a better chance in the next Election if he puts his house in order.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
Source: Tellusghana.com