A former National Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Peter Ameh, says the pulse from northern Nigeria shows that the people of the region accept presidential hopeful Peter Obi and his single-term proposal.

“I am from northern Nigeria and we know, as I speak today, that the current available decision of our people favours Peter Obi,” Ameh said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Thursday.

Ameh, a staunch supporter of the 2023 flag bearer of the Labour Party (LP), said four years is enough for Obi to change Nigeria.

According to him, the former Anambra governor seeking to be elected president in 2027, isn’t coming to learn on the job, and he does not have an “it’s-my-turn mentality” like President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

For the former IPAC chair, Obi’s character, competence and empathic leadership made him accepted in northern Nigeria.

Ameh said, “The north is a very diverse place and a very complex political territory. For me, I don’t think the north is as difficult as people want to make us believe.

“The northern Nigeria that you see today – Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto and all that – his (Obi’s) performance there was very clear, even in Plateau. We want a free election, that is fair and that is credible.

“The north is more politically understanding than any other region of this country. Peter Obi has made an emphatic statement and a public declaration that ‘I want to do only one term so that I don’t tilt the balance of our unwritten arrangement’.

“We should be looking for someone who has compassion, discipline, character and competence, and not about ethnicity or religion.”

According to the former IPAC chair, Tinubu has been rejected, not only by northerners but by the suffering masses in the country.

“It is clear that the next election is not going to be the same thing. And that is why you see the struggle to give appointments and change certain things by the government. Even the Chief of Staff (Femi Gbajabiamila) is holding meetings with the northern House of Representatives because they know the people are not happy.

“We are going to challenge all the illegal processes that were used to undermine our voters and the outcome of the election, and we are going to put mechanisms in place to defend the popularity that Peter Obi has gotten and the acceptance he now enjoys.”

Ahead of the 2027 election, Obi has restated his decision to serve for a single-term of four years to complete the unwritten rule of eight-year power rotation between the southern and northern regions of Nigeria.

Obi hopes to succeed former Lagos governor, Tinubu, as Nigeria’s president in 2027.

In May 2023, Tinubu, a southerner, took over from a northerner, Muhammadu Buhari, who served for eight years. Tinubu is seeking re-election in 2027 but many members of the opposition and Nigerians have criticised his administration for plunging citizens into unprecedented hardship with his economic reforms. (Channels TV)