A former Minister of Information and National Orientation, Labaran Maku, said the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP underestimated the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and his supporters known as the ‘Obidients.’
The former minister said this in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Tuesday.
Maku, a PDP chieftain from Nasarawa State, said the two main parties underestimated Obi and his supporters over claims of lack of political structure.
He said, “They thought Obi would not be able to do much, but were surprised by the outcome of the 2023 presidential election, which showed that the youths were not joking.”
“What happened in the presidential election as you could see was that there was this wave of young people, the ‘Obidients’ that we all took for granted and we were thinking Peter Obi was a joke. Where would he go?
“So, both PDP and the APC, we were thinking ‘This man does not have structure. He will not be able to do so much’.
“But the young people seized the initiative from the politicians. And for the first time – what we saw in Nasarawa, Edo, several other places, and in Delta State where the PDP vice presidential candidate comes from – we saw that young people were serious about what they were doing and they took advantage of social media to project a programme which has shaken the nation.”
Maku admitted that the party lost the presidential election in the state to the Labour Party, noting that the ruling APC’s win in the governorship poll was faulty.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission, in the early hours of March 1, declared the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, president-elect after the 70-year-old polled 8,794,726 votes to win the 2023 presidential election.
Obi defeated the former governor in Lagos state, where many considered as a strong hold of the APC leader.
