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| Minister of Work — David Umahi |
Framing the former Anambra governor’s 2023 bid as a solo venture that bypassed the region’s traditional power brokers and arguing that genuine progress for the Igbo requires negotiated national alliances rather than loyalty tests around one man.
Speaking on ARISE News on Friday, October 23, 2026, the former Ebonyi State governor rejected the idea that Obi’s strong showing in the last presidential election automatically crowns him the South-East’s standard-bearer for 2027.
“Peter Obi is not the best of our finest in South East. He’s not the best, he can never be the best,” Umahi said. He insisted a candidate carrying the region’s presidential aspirations must first consult governors and other stakeholders. “You cannot play politics in South East without consulting people like us,” he added. “If I were contesting, I would have consulted.”
Umahi also dismissed the notion that the presidency, if it rotates to the South-East, should default to Anambra simply because Nigeria’s first president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, hailed from the area that now forms that state. He named Ebonyi, Enugu, Abia and Imo as states that deserve consideration in any future discussion. In one report of the interview he went further, criticising what he portrayed as Obi unilaterally deciding the Igbo should settle for a single four-year term while others serve eight: “Who in the South-East reached that agreement with him? Nobody did. Even if South-East should produce President, it should come from Ebonyi State.”
The comments formed part of a broader defence of South-East political figures who have aligned with President Bola Tinubu rather than Obi. Umahi argued that treating support for any single candidate as a test of regional loyalty is misguided. The path to the presidency for the South-East, he maintained, lies in building cross-regional alliances and negotiating within the larger Nigerian political marketplace, not in elevating one politician as the region’s sole viable option. He also stated that Obi poses no threat to Tinubu, describing the former Labour Party candidate’s influence in some accounts as “artificial intelligence politics.”
This is not the first time Umahi has drawn a sharp contrast with Obi. In September 2026, speaking in Benin City during an event on the Benin-Asaba road project, he challenged claims that Obi was his superior, asking whether the comparison rested on family background, intellectual capacity, service records or contributions to the South-East while both men were governors. He reiterated then that the region would one day produce a Nigerian president but insisted “it is not yet our turn,” framing the current moment as Tinubu’s.
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| Peter Obi |
Background and the deeper political currents
Umahi’s remarks sit at the intersection of several long-running Nigerian political realities. The South-East has not produced an elected president since the return to civilian rule in 1999, a fact that fuels persistent grievances about marginalisation rooted in the aftermath of the civil war. Power-rotation and zoning arrangements—informal but powerful norms within the major parties—have repeatedly deferred Igbo presidential ambitions. Azikiwe’s earlier role as ceremonial president in the First Republic is often invoked, yet it has not translated into contemporary executive power for the region.
Obi’s 2023 campaign, run under the Labour Party banner after he left the Peoples Democratic Party, was distinctive precisely because it operated largely outside the traditional godfather and governor networks that dominate South-East politics. He mobilised significant youth and diaspora energy, swept the five South-East states, and finished a strong third nationally.
That performance created a popular narrative that he had become the region’s natural presidential face. Establishment figures such as Umahi—himself a former PDP governor who later joined the All Progressives Congress and now serves as Tinubu’s Works Minister—have consistently pushed back against that narrative.
Their critique centres on process: presidential ambition on behalf of a region, they argue, requires elite consensus rather than personal mobilisation.
Umahi’s own trajectory illustrates the establishment path. As Ebonyi governor he focused heavily on infrastructure, particularly roads, a portfolio he continues at the federal level. Alignment with the ruling party has brought continued relevance and access. For many South-East politicians, supporting the incumbent offers tangible returns in appointments, projects and political survival, especially when the alternative is backing a candidate who challenges the existing elite bargains.
Analysis: consultation, zoning and competing visions of leadership
Umahi’s emphasis on consultation is classic Nigerian elite politics. In a system where governors control substantial patronage and party structures, a presidential aspirant who does not first secure their buy-in risks isolation. Obi’s independent style and direct appeal to voters outside those structures produced electoral results in 2023 but left him without the institutional anchors many traditional politicians consider essential for a sustained national push.
The insistence that other South-East states must also have a shot at the presidency reflects intra-regional competition as much as principle.
Anambra has produced high-profile national figures; states such as Ebonyi, which Umahi governed, have historically felt secondary within Igbo political calculations. Framing the issue this way both dilutes any automatic claim Obi might make and keeps open future opportunities for politicians from other states.
Umahi’s defence of Tinubu supporters also highlights a strategic calculation. If the South-East wants the presidency in a subsequent cycle, the argument goes, it cannot afford to burn bridges with the current administration or other regions. Treating political choice as ethnic betrayal, in this view, weakens rather than strengthens the region’s hand. Critics of this stance counter that elite accommodation has historically delivered limited structural gains for the South-East and that popular momentum around a figure such as Obi represents a different, more disruptive route to relevance.
Looking toward 2027, the remarks signal continued friction between two currents in South-East politics: a popular, media-amplified current centred on Obi and a more conventional elite current focused on negotiation, party structures and incremental access to power. Umahi’s interview makes clear which side he occupies and why he believes the other path is both unrealistic and unrepresentative of the region’s “finest.” Whether that assessment ultimately shapes voter behaviour, party negotiations or the next cycle of presidential candidacies remains the central open question in South-East politics.
Samuel O. Sulaimon is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Naijapiz. He covers Global, News, Sports, Finance, Faiths, Education, Politics and Technology.
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