Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike has said the aggrieved Peoples Democratic Party governors known as the G5 deliberately allowed Peter Obi to win parts of the South-South in the 2023 presidential election, in order to deny the PDP’s own candidate, Atiku Abubakar, votes in a region the party had long dominated.
Wike first made the claim during an appearance on TVC’s Journalists’ Hangout on Monday, 21 September 2026, and returned to it days later after an inspection of projects in the Federal Capital Territory. According to him, the bloc rated Atiku, not Obi, as the real threat to its interests, and decided that ceding the region’s votes to the Labour Party candidate would hurt the former vice president more than it would help Obi.
“Our strategy was that, listen, you vote, make sure that you vote for Obi to win, in order to deny Atiku the votes,” Wike said. He explained that the South-South was traditionally a PDP stronghold, and that had it voted strictly along party lines, Atiku would have gained the advantage.
Wike said Rivers, which he governed at the time, was treated as an exception. He told the programme that an Obi victory there could send what he called a wrong signal, and that the bloc moved to prevent it.
The account he gives lines up with the official results in parts of the South-South. In Cross River, a state that had returned PDP governors since 1999, the Independent National Electoral Commission recorded Obi with 179,917 votes to Bola Tinubu’s 130,520 and Atiku’s 95,425, according to figures announced at the state collation centre in late February 2023. Obi also carried Edo and Delta, while Atiku held Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa.
Rivers moved the other way. INEC declared Tinubu the winner there with 231,591 votes, ahead of Obi’s 175,071 and Atiku’s 88,468, with Tinubu taking 14 of the 23 local government areas. Wike, though still a PDP member then, had openly backed Tinubu, and the outcome fed long-running claims that he worked for the APC in the state.
The G5 comprised Wike, Seyi Makinde of Oyo, Samuel Ortom of Benue, Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia and Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu. The five fell out with the party leadership over its refusal to cede the presidential ticket to the South after eight years of Muhammadu Buhari’s presidency, and campaigned against Atiku’s candidacy through the election.
Wike used the same appearances to reject accusations that the strategy amounted to rigging Rivers in Tinubu’s favour. He argued that no LP result sheet was ever tendered at the election tribunal to prove Obi won the state. “Did anybody tender any result from Rivers State that, ‘Look, this is the result, we won’? Did anybody?” he said, adding that it was unfair to describe the outcome as manipulation.
He drew a distinction between strategy and fraud, saying every camp deployed tactics that were not made public. “You cannot rig an election where you are not popular. You cannot. If you try that, then you see what happens; people will resist it,” he said.
The remarks have drawn pushback. Nigerian Democratic Congress chieftain Aisha Yesufu, in a post on X, disputed Wike’s claim of decisive influence, noting that three of the G5 governors ran for the Senate in 2023 and lost. “If Wike was that powerful how come he couldn’t give them a win on an election that was on the same day and time,” she wrote. Neither Obi’s nor Atiku’s camp had formally responded at the time of writing.
Wike framed the disclosure within an argument about 2027, suggesting the conditions that lifted Obi in 2023 have since faded. He pointed to the backlash over the APC’s Muslim-Muslim ticket, which he said no longer carries the same weight, and questioned whether Obi could repeat his South-South showing in states such as Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Delta. He said the G5, now aligned with the Tinubu-led government, had its own strategy for the next election but would not disclose it.
Nationally, the 2023 contest ended with Tinubu polling 8,794,726 votes, Atiku 6,984,520 and Obi 6,101,533, with each of the three winning 12 states and Rabiu Kwankwaso taking Kano. Atiku lost every G5 state.
Wike’s version remains a partisan actor’s retrospective account of his own conduct, offered without documents, and the tribunal that reviewed the 2023 result did not make findings on the strategy he describes. What is settled is the published tally in each state. What he has added is a claim about intent behind those numbers, which the affected camps have yet to answer.