The Bola Tinubu presidency has advised Nigerians not to believe the pledge by heavyweight opposition politician Peter Obi to spend only four years in office as President of Nigeria, for the sake of the country’s political stability.
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, while casting doubts on the credibility of his promise, asserted that anyone who believes the 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate’s promise “will believe anything”.
A viral clip from an interview scheduled to air on News Central TV had caught Obi vowing not to remain in office beyond four years “even with a gun to my head”, citing the urgent need to stabilise Nigeria and reverse what he described as worsening economic hardship and insecurity.
His words, “For stability, I won’t spend a day with a gun on my head longer than four years,” he said. “What we have now is only two years that somebody used to borrow more than all the previous governments put together. It’s only two years that Nigeria has entered into the hungriest country in the world.”
Responding in a post on X on Thursday, Onanuga, who is the spokesman of the Tinubu presidency, dismissed the pledge, insisting that Obi’s political history reflects inconsistency.
“If you believe Peter Obi’s promise to serve only one term as president, you’ll believe anything,” Onanuga said.
He pointed out that Obi had previously pledged loyalty to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) while serving as governor of Anambra State but later defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
“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.
According to Onanuga, Obi’s political trajectory over the years suggests his promises are unreliable.
“By his own actions, Peter Obi has shown that his word cannot be trusted. His promises are as fleeting as his political allegiances,” the presidency official added.
In the video that is making the rounds online, Obi criticised the current administration’s handling of insecurity, lamenting what he described as a disconnect between leadership and the realities on the ground. “A president of Nigeria can stay in Abuja and two hundred people die in Jos or in Niger, or in Benue. I will go there,” Obi stated. “When you go to the theatre of war, you will know how to contribute.”
The former governor of Anambra State also took aim at the government’s response to the agricultural crisis, linking food insecurity to insecurity in farming communities.
“Something failed in everything. Ukraine that is at war is donating grain to Nigeria,” he said. “Look at what happened to us with our farmers. Instead of intervening when there was a crisis, we went to import food. They killed all the farmers.”
