Oshiomhole Dismisses Obi’s One Term Pledge As Desperation

Senator Adams Oshiomhole has dismissed Peter Obi’s renewed promise to serve a single four year term if elected president in 2027 as unrealistic and born of desperation, reigniting debate over whether one tenure is enough to reset Nigeria’s troubled economy and security architecture.

Speaking on TVC’s Beyond the Headlines, the Edo North senator and former national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) questioned the sincerity and capacity of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate, who recently reaffirmed on national television that he would leave office after four years.

“Do you really believe that anybody… who couldn’t fix a state in four years, he worked hard in eight years, he didn’t fix it, is telling you and me at our age that he just needs four years? That is the height of desperation,” Oshiomhole said. He added that “once you are desperate, you become emotionally imbalanced,” and described Obi as “the easiest person to engage in a debate.”

Obi governed Anambra State under the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) between 2006 and 2014, a tenure briefly interrupted by impeachment and later restored through the courts. Oshiomhole seized on that history, faulting the former governor for abandoning the party after leaving office. “The Peter Obi that was governor of Anambra State is not the Peter Obi of today,” he said, recalling Obi’s earlier vow never to leave APGA out of respect for the memory of Igbo leader Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. “But before daybreak, once his tenure ended, Obi became a political wanderer,” he said.

The former labour leader also drew a line between Obi’s commercial background and the demands of governance. “Obi is a trader. Traders have short term calculation. They are not into long term projections,” he said, further alleging, “Obi’s business is to export jobs and import unemployment to the country.”

Obi has consistently defended the one term proposal as a stabilising measure rather than a campaign gimmick. He made the pledge after the NDC zoned its presidential ticket to the South and the vice presidency to the North, an arrangement that positions former Kano State governor Rabiu Kwankwaso as his running mate. Kwankwaso disclosed this month that the two men signed a written agreement binding Obi to a single tenure, saying he did not expect his principal to renege. Obi himself insisted he would honour the deal “even at gun point,” telling Channels Television that four years was enough “to show Nigerians the right path they will follow.”

The exchange underscores hardening battle lines ahead of 2027. Obi, who contested under the Labour Party in 2023 and finished third with about 6.1 million votes while carrying Lagos, the Federal Capital Territory and much of the South East, has since realigned within a wider opposition bloc that earlier coalesced around the African Democratic Congress (ADC) before his move to the NDC.

Oshiomhole, by contrast, defended President Bola Tinubu’s economic record, likening the reforms to “a life saving surgical operation.” “Bola Ahmed Tinubu is someone who believes that for your tomorrow, we must do certain things today, painful as it may be,” he said.

Available data offer a mixed backdrop to that claim. The National Bureau of Statistics put headline inflation at 15.91 percent in June 2026, down sharply from 25.29 percent a year earlier and from a peak above 34 percent in 2024, after the removal of the petrol subsidy and the floating of the naira in 2023. Food inflation eased to 17.52 percent over the same period, though prices remain high, with Niger, Kogi and the Federal Capital Territory recording year on year rates above 39 percent.

The APC has repeatedly cast the opposition’s promises as unworkable, while Obi’s camp maintains that decisive leadership, not tenure length, is what Nigeria lacks. With campaigning yet to formally begin, the argument over how much can be achieved in four years looks set to stay central to the contest.