To secure the support of the PDP’s five disgruntled governors, the Labour Party’s (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, will have to persuade LP gubernatorial and senatorial candidates to withdraw their candidacies.
WITHIN NIGERIA understands that this is a condition for receiving the support of Governors Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Seyi Makinde (Oyo), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), Samuel Ortom (Benue), and Okezie Ikpeazu (Benue) (Abia).
The G5 governors are currently in the United Kingdom to choose between Obi and the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, after declining to support their party’s presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
The governors, determined to ensure that the next president is from southern Nigeria, had narrowed their choices to Obi and Tinubu but were divided on which of the two they should support unanimously.
While some governors are said to support Tinubu, others support an Obi presidency.
According to the Daily Sun, despite former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s efforts to persuade the governors to support the LP presidential candidate, obtaining unanimous support has proven difficult.
According to governors’ allies, Wike and Ortom support Obi due to popular sentiment in their respective states.
A source said:
Some of the governors are insisting that they would give 100 percent of their support to Obi on the condition that the governorship candidates of LP in their various states who are seen as strong contenders step down.
As it stands, Wike and Ortom are most likely to support Obi, but they won’t put all their eggs in one basket. And I can tell you for a fact that if it happens, all the governors, including would help Tinubu get substantial votes cast in their various states like they did for Buhari in 2019.
For Makinde, he will go for Tinubu because that is the most popular candidate in Oyo State. At the moment, Makinde’s re-election bid is not without hitches and many are wondering if he would break the second term jinx of his predecessors who found it difficult to win a second term.