By Ayodele Oni
As Nigerians prepare for another round of general elections next year, controversy still trails results of 2023 presidential election as a former member of Obidient Movement claims Peter Obi admitted to members that he lost the Presidential poll.
Lawrence Okoro, an X user who claims to be a former member of the Obidient Movement, alleged that Peter Obi, the 2023 Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, once admitted he lost the election.
However, reacting to the allegation in an interview with TheCable, Yunusa Tanko, national coordinator of the Obidient Movement, challenged Okoro to provide proof of his claims, insisting that no such meeting ever took place.
The presidential election, held on February 25, 2023, was contested by Obi, alongside other candidates, including President Bola Tinubu, who was then the flagbearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
According to results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Obi came third with 6,101,533 votes, behind Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 6,984,520 votes, while Tinubu won the election with 8,794,726 votes.
However, during a press conference in Abuja on March 2, 2023, Obi insisted he won the election and would prove it legally.
“This election will go down as one of the most controversial elections ever conducted in Nigeria,” the former governor of Anambra said.
“The good people of Nigeria have again been robbed. However, I appeal to Nigerians to remain peaceful and law-abiding.
“This is not the end but a beginning… We will explore all legal and peaceful options to reclaim our mandate. We won the election and we will prove it to Nigerians.”
In a post shared on X, Okoro alleged that the former LP presidential candidate later “openly admitted” he “lost the election” due to the failure of party agents.
“Back when I was still part of the Obidient movement, I attended a closed-door meeting with Peter Obi,” he wrote.
“It was a small, selected group, shortly after the elections, as plans were being made around the ‘All Eyes On The Judiciary’ push.
“During that meeting, he openly admitted that he knew he lost the election, largely due to the absence of party agents across polling units to defend the mandate.”
Okoro said the claim surprised him, prompting him to question Obi further.
“I asked a simple question: ‘Sir, if we lost the election, why are we in court?’” he said.
“The room instantly turned on me. You could feel the outrage. Everyone was ready to shut me down, but he stayed quiet and never gave an answer.”
But, Yunusa Tanko, national coordinator of the Obidient Movement, told The Cable that no such meeting ever took place.
“Can he give us proof of that? Because there was never a time we had that particular discussion,” Tanko said.
“We have always maintained that we won the election and that it was manipulated, based on the fact that from the beginning, the results were not uploaded on INEC’s IReV as at when due. We all knew that.
“Instead of results being shown on the IReV in real time, we only saw pictures of human beings.”
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