The proposal by a pro President Bola Tinubu support group for Peter Obi to withdraw from the 2027 presidential race and support the incumbent has opened a larger question about the political arithmetic of the Southeast, and whether an alliance between the region and the Southwest can realistically alter the succession calculations ahead of the next presidential election.
The Southeast chapter of the Renewed Hope for Greater Nigeria, RHGN, led by Mazi Franklin Ngoforo, says it plans to approach Ohanaeze Ndigbo President General Senator John Azuta Mbata and prominent Igbo statesmen, including Chief Emeka Anyaoku and Commodore Ebitu Ukiwe, to persuade Obi to step down and support Tinubu.
Ngoforo’s argument is that the Southeast could use 2027 to build a political bargain with the Southwest, rather than pursue what he described as an immediate presidential ambition that could be deferred to a later election.
But the proposal arrives at a point when the 2027 contest has already moved beyond informal positioning. Obi has secured the presidential ticket of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, and formally began his campaign after the official commencement of the election campaign period.
That makes the proposed withdrawal more difficult than a simple appeal to an aspirant.
The strongest evidence for understanding the proposal is the 2023 presidential election.
Official results from the Independent National Electoral Commission show that Obi polled 6,101,533 votes nationally under the Labour Party, finishing third behind Tinubu, who won with 8,794,726 votes, and Atiku Abubakar, who scored 6,984,520.
Obi’s strongest geographical base was unmistakably the Southeast.
Across Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo, he recorded 1,952,998 votes, representing 87.78 per cent of all valid presidential votes cast in the zone. Tinubu received 127,370 votes, or 5.72 per cent, while Atiku received 90,968 votes, or 4.09 per cent.
The state figures were particularly striking. Obi secured 327,095 votes in Abia, 584,621 in Anambra and 259,738 in Ebonyi. He also won Enugu and Imo, giving him all five Southeast states.
Yet the same data also exposes a major limitation in treating the 2023 result as a guaranteed political bloc for 2027.
Only 2,224,934 valid presidential votes were recorded across the entire Southeast in 2023. The region therefore supplied fewer than two million votes to Obi despite his overwhelming share of the votes that were actually cast there.
Nationally, only 24,025,940 valid votes were recorded from 93,469,008 registered voters in 2023. The turnout based on accredited voters was just 27.05 per cent.
This means the 2027 contest will not simply be about which candidate commands the largest share of a particular region. It will also depend on voter mobilisation, turnout, the spread of support across Nigeria and the ability to satisfy the constitutional requirements for winning the presidency.
The timing is significant.
INEC has fixed January 16, 2027 for the presidential and National Assembly elections, meaning the country is already within the formal election cycle.
More importantly, Obi is no longer merely considering another presidential run. The NDC adopted him as its presidential candidate in May, and the party has since commenced its campaign. Obi has publicly presented his candidacy as an attempt to address Nigeria’s economic and security challenges and has challenged presidential candidates to defend their records and programmes before voters.
The NDC had also zoned its 2027 presidential ticket to the South for a single four year term, a political arrangement that strengthened Obi’s route to the nomination.
Consequently, the RHGN proposal is not simply asking a politician to abandon an undeclared aspiration. It is asking the candidate of a recognised political party to abandon an already established campaign.
There is no indication in the available public record that Obi has accepted the proposal.
RHGN has previously set an ambitious target of delivering four million votes for Tinubu from the Southeast.
Ngoforo announced the target in July and said the organisation had established structures across the five states, including state, senatorial district, local government and ward structures, as well as plans for polling unit mobilisation.
The target can be tested against the last presidential election.
Tinubu received 127,370 votes across the Southeast in 2023. Reaching four million votes would therefore require an increase of roughly 3.87 million votes, meaning the proposed target is more than 31 times Tinubu’s 2023 Southeast tally.
That does not make the target impossible. Electoral outcomes can change significantly between elections. But the available evidence shows that it would require a very substantial shift in voter behaviour, turnout and political organisation.
It is also worth separating campaign targets from electoral evidence. The four million figure is RHGN’s stated mobilisation target, not a forecast by INEC or an independently verified projection.
Ngoforo’s central argument is less about 2027 alone and more about political succession.
He argues that if Tinubu wins a second term, the Southeast could support the Southwest in 2027 while building reciprocal political support for a future Southeast presidential bid.
There is a constitutional basis for the argument that a successful 2027 Tinubu re-election would be his final presidential term. Section 137 of the Constitution bars a person from being elected president more than twice. Tinubu won the 2023 election and is seeking re-election in 2027.
However, a future political bargain is not the same as a guaranteed succession arrangement. Nigerian presidential elections are decided by voters and constitutional requirements, not informal regional agreements.
The 2023 election itself demonstrated how difficult such calculations can be. Tinubu won 12 states, Atiku won 12, Obi won 12 and Rabiu Kwankwaso won one, before the final national tally produced Tinubu as winner with 36.61 per cent of valid votes.
The result showed that Nigeria’s presidential electorate cannot be reduced neatly to a single regional voting bloc.
The proposal therefore presents Southeast voters with a political argument rather than an established electoral fact.
Supporters of the strategy may argue that backing an incumbent from another southern zone could generate political goodwill and strengthen the Southeast’s bargaining position for a later presidential contest.
Obi’s supporters can reasonably take the opposite position: that withdrawing from an election is itself a political decision requiring evidence that the proposed alternative arrangement would produce the promised long term benefit.
The question is ultimately larger than whether one candidate withdraws.
It is whether Nigerian voters will continue to respond primarily to regional calculations, or whether the 2027 campaign will increasingly be determined by candidates’ records, economic policies, security plans, party structures and voters’ assessment of the Tinubu administration and its challengers.
With the campaign season already underway, that debate is no longer theoretical. It will increasingly be tested against actual candidates, policies, alliances and, ultimately, votes.