FORMER Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and the Presidency on Thursday clashed over his declaration that he would serve only one term of four years if elected president in 2027, with the Presidency dismissing the pledge as unreliable and inconsistent with his political history.
News Point Nigeria reports that Obi made the declaration in a clip from an interview scheduled to air on News Central TV on Thursday, where he insisted he would not remain in office beyond four years under any circumstance.
“I want to be a one-term president because of stability. I would not stay a day, with a gun to my head, longer than four years,” Obi said in the circulating video.
The former governor of Anambra State also criticised the current administration’s economic policies, including borrowing and the rising cost of living, saying Nigeria had entered one of its most difficult economic periods.
Obi contested the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the Labour Party, where he finished third behind President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Since the election, Obi has remained one of the country’s leading opposition figures and has frequently criticised the Tinubu administration’s economic reforms.
However, reacting to Obi’s comments in a post on X on Thursday, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, dismissed the one-term promise, arguing that Obi’s political history reflected a pattern of inconsistency and broken loyalty.
“If you believe Peter Obi’s promise to serve only one term as president, you’ll believe anything,” Onanuga wrote.
According to him, Obi had previously pledged loyalty to the All Progressives Grand Alliance while serving as governor of Anambra State before later defecting to the Peoples Democratic Party.
“Peter Obi’s pledges have always been short-lived. He ultimately abandoned APGA for the PDP, and since then, he has drifted from one political platform to another, a political rolling stone,” he stated.
Onanuga further argued that Obi’s political movements over the years showed that his promises could not be trusted.
“By his own actions, Peter Obi has shown that his word cannot be trusted. His promises are as fleeting as his political allegiances,” he added.
Obi was the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 election before later joining the Nigeria Democratic Congress following his exit from the African Democratic Congress coalition ahead of the 2027 presidential election scheduled for January 16, 2027.