Onanuga Faults Obi Over 2023 Funds, Election Claims
A fresh confrontation between the Presidency and former Anambra State governor Peter Obi has thrown the spotlight back on the disputed 2023 election, after presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga accused the opposition figure of failing to fully account for campaign funds and of misrepresenting the record of his political career.
Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, made the claims in a statement posted on X on Monday, July 27, 2026, reacting to Obi’s appearance on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics a day earlier. He said he stopped watching after about 30 minutes and described the interview as a “PR disaster” that drew widespread criticism rather than reviving what he called Obi’s “ebbing 2027 presidential ambition.”
Central to the statement was the allegation over party finances. “The Labour Party fell into a serious leadership crisis after the election, with campaign funds in your possession not fully accounted for,” Onanuga said, adding that Obi “chickened out” instead of staying to resolve the crisis and rebuild the party.
The allegation is not new to the public square. Following the 2023 vote, the Labour Party’s then national chairman, Julius Abure, had publicly stated that the party did not control donation accounts, which he said were operated by designated signatories including activist Aisha Yesufu and Pastor Itua Ighodalo. Obi has on earlier occasions given his own public account of how the campaign was funded.
Onanuga also took issue with Obi’s movement across parties. He rejected Obi’s comparison of his trajectory with that of Tinubu, arguing that the President had stayed on the progressive path since entering partisan politics in the early 1990s, passing through the Social Democratic Party, the Alliance for Democracy, the Action Congress, the Action Congress of Nigeria and finally the All Progressives Congress, formed from the 2013 merger of opposition parties.
By contrast, he traced Obi’s path from the All Progressives Grand Alliance, on whose platform he became Anambra governor, to the Peoples Democratic Party, where he was Atiku Abubakar’s running mate in 2019, then to the Labour Party for the 2023 election, and now to the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, on whose platform he is reported to be eyeing 2027. “You do not build; you always want to reap where you did not sow,” Onanuga said, predicting Obi would abandon the NDC if it failed to serve his ambition.
On the contested outcome of the last election, the presidential aide insisted Obi should accept the verdict. Official figures released by the Independent National Electoral Commission gave Tinubu victory with 8,794,726 votes, or 36.61 percent, ahead of Atiku with 6,984,520 votes (29.07 percent) and Obi in third place with 6,101,533 votes (25.40 percent). Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party polled 1,496,687 votes.
Obi nonetheless recorded notable wins, taking Lagos, Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Nasarawa and the Federal Capital Territory among others, an outcome widely read as a disruption of the traditional two party contest. His legal challenge was dismissed by the Presidential Election Petition Court in September 2023, and the Supreme Court affirmed Tinubu’s election in October 2023.
Onanuga argued that Obi’s showing was driven largely by ethnic bloc voting and urged him to move on, crediting the interviewer, Seun Okinbaloye, with giving Obi “a golden opportunity” to concede the result.
Obi, who has consistently maintained that the election was not free and fair, had not issued a formal rebuttal to the latest claims as of the time of filing. The exchange signals an early sharpening of political lines ahead of the 2027 general election.