A leader of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Abayomi Arabambi has downplayed the proposal of the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi to serve one term if elected as President, saying Nigerians should not trust the former Anambra State governor to keep his promise.
During an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, on Tuesday, Arabambi said that Obi’s claim of serving one term if elected as president cannot stand, citing his defection from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) – the platform he was elected as the governor of Anambra State.
‘So, we are not going to trust him’, Arabami said on the show about Obi’s proposal of a single term.
‘So, Peter Obi cannot be telling Nigerians, ‘Oh don’t worry, I will do a single term’ when ab initio with his own mouth, he said he would stay in APGA; he is not going to leave’, the factional National Publicity Secretary of the LP said.
Obi came third in that 023 presidential poll, receiving over six million votes.
In recent times, Obi had promised to serve a single term of four years if elected as Nigeria’s president in 2027.
‘In my political life, my word is my bond…My vow to serve only one term of four years is a solemn commitment, rooted in my conviction that purposeful, transparent leadership does not require an eternity’, Obi said in a tweet on Sunday, re-echoing his stance.
But Arabambi said that Obi’s proposal should not be taken to the bank, alleging that the LP chieftain got support in the last presidential election because youth were fed up with the then administration of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
He claimed Obi also never supported the LP financially and is instead a beneficiary of the party. According to him, the Labour Party made Obi and not the other way around.
‘No kobo of Peter Obi entered the party’, Arabambi said.
Meanwhile, celebrated author Chimamanda Adichie says her support for Obi was based on her belief in his ‘selfless leadership’, and ‘commitment’, to the country.
‘He (Obi) doesn’t need to be president. He wants to be because he cares about Nigeria, but he doesn’t need to be. And that is a very important distinction. There are people who are desperate to become president, not because they have any good intentions for the country, but because of their egos’, she said during an exclusive interview on Channels Television’s Amazing Africans.
She said: ‘Peter Obi is not a person who expects you to thank him for doing his job as a leader, because to him it’s his job.
‘There’s a sense, I think, in Peter Obi that he’s accountable to the people. He doesn’t think that somehow he will lord it over people’.
