By Ayox Ojo
Activist, publisher and former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore has dismissed claims that the 2023 president candidate of Labour Party, Peter Obi, is currently the most visible face of the opposition in Nigeria.
Sowore said this while reiterating his stance that the former Anambra governor lacks the capacity to effectively play the role of opposition in Nigeria despite garnering over six million votes and placing third in the 2023 presidential election.
The AAC presidential candidate spoke on Sunday when he appeared a guest on Inside Sources, a programme on Channels Television.
“I don’t know why anybody refers to Peter Obi as an opposition. He is not opposed to anything the government is doing. He didn’t organise his supporters to fight for the election victory he claimed,” Soweore said while also citing failure of the Labour Party’s candidate to mobilize his supporters to oppose the increase in fuel prices by the President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
He argued that Peter Obi has not been involved in mobilisation, resistance, and street action required to play the role of opposition.
“If you say you’re opposition, you must act like it. You had six million people vote for you — if you can’t put all of them on the streets, at least put 60,000 in Abuja and see how seriously the government will take you.
“He hasn’t done anything that an opposition figure typically does,” the activist said while reiterating that his assertions about Peter Obi’s lack of capacity to challenge the existing system in Nigeria have now been confirmed.
Sowore further noted that the support enjoined by Peter Obi in 2023 was because of the opposition to the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
“There was this whole debate around the Muslim-Muslim ticket, so Christians responded by saying, ‘If you want to Islamise Nigeria, we’ll Christianise it too’. And who was the most available Christian candidate? Peter Obi.
The AAC presidential candidate also said the ongoing detection of Labour Party lawmakers to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was another reflection of the fact their party was not set out to play real opposition.
“Look at all the Labour Party people in the National Assembly — they’re not decamping back to where they came from. They’re decamping to the APC. That’s the point; these guys are not real. They weren’t real in 2023, and they won’t be in 2027,” Sowore said.
