By Dr. Ebuka Onyekwelu
As of today, it is doubtful that the Southeast is properly positioned for a formidable presidential competition in 2027 or even 2031. Although Peter Obi’s towering figure predisposes him as one of Nigeria’s most consequential political leaders. Irrespective of this glaring fact, it is also true that the Southeast, Peter Obi’s zone, is yet to muster a credible push for Nigeria’s top job in the next two or six years. This suggests that Obi’s personal branding must be dutifully aligned with a credible machinery to deliver the desired result.
Admittedly, Southeast’s political makeup is convoluted at the moment, with the APC in charge of three states: Enugu, Ebonyi, and Imo. The Labour Party is in charge of Abia, and while APGA is in Anambra, its support for the APC is apparently unambiguous. Given clear political realities, the APC ticket will remain with President Bola Tinubu in 2027. The other two options for a real presidential contest in the opposition would be the PDP and the ADC. Yet, the PDP, which has gradually emerged as a battered image of its former self, does not seem to have the full requirements for a credible presidential outing. Notwithstanding, it is a far better platform for the presidential race than the Labour Party, which Peter Obi, who has dominated the Southeast’s presidential run, parades as his party. By implication, the Southeast doesn’t have a grip on any mainstream platform, including the PDP and the ADC, in terms of control of the parties’ machinery. What this means is that, except for any last-minute eventuality, the Southeast, or, if you may, Peter Obi, is poised to merely contest for the sake of it. At this point, one is forced to interrogate the Southeast’s political calculations that birth its repeated catch-up in the schemes of Nigerian politics. For instance, APGA, which is magnified in Anambra as the Igbo party and wrapped with the identity of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the late Biafran warlord, has refused to grow outside Anambra State. In fact, in Anambra State, APGA has not dominated the politics in the State and National Assembly elections, which casts a huge doubt on its claims of dominance in Anambra politics. A party founded in 2002 as a base for Southeast’s national political negotiations, but has remained just in Anambra State since 2006. In contrast, Action Congress, later Action Congress of Nigeria, founded in 2006, rose to become the dominant party in the Southwest before merging with other parties to become the APC, which is today’s national ruling party.
It is, therefore, crucial that we examine the core problem that has limited the growth chances of APGA to becoming a zonal political force. The first and major concern is how APGA selects its candidates. In fact, in Anambra State, despite APGA’s formidable structure, the party has only won senatorial elections twice since 2006 it assumed governance of Anambra State. The first was during the Anambra State Central rerun in which Sen. Victor Umeh contested virtually as the sole candidate after challenging PDP’s Sen. Uche Ekwunife’s victory up to the Supreme Court in 2017. The other was the August 2025 Anambra South senatorial by-election, in which APGA did not have a viable competitor. The import is that perhaps APGA traditionally gives its tickets to weak candidates who are likely not to win in a seriously contested election. Again, this might raise a question as to how the party arrives at who gets their tickets. This might then raise a question regarding the influence of the Church in the internal political machinations of APGA. These local political intricacies, as small as they might appear, may have fundamentally shaped the Southeast’s fortune in Nigeria’s politics. Sadly, there is no end in sight.
What has been seen of APGA in the last two decades in power in Anambra State mirrors completely what has now been seen of the Labour Party after a successful outing in the 2023 election season. With at least eight members in the Anambra State Assembly, the LP also has six out of the State’s eleven House of Representatives Seats and two senators out of the state’s three senatorial seats, yet the last governorship election in November showed a party whose identity has been lost. In fact, the by-election earlier in August, both in Anambra South senatorial zone and in Onitsha North State Constituency, the interests are superficial or peripheral, at best. Are local elections won for winning’s sake or for a greater purpose under Nigeria’s federal arrangement? There is a particular problem with the Southeast’s approach to party politics, or so it seems. There is a particular poor party supervision and candidates’ selection process, which tends not only to stagnate but also to strangulate political platforms that could have emerged as the Southeast’s base for national political negotiations. To make matters worse, the current brazen vote-buying and selling by voters and politicians have more seriously foreclosed Southeast’s competitive edge. Is there a candidate who can potentially out-buy a sitting president or his foot soldiers? This trend, if not addressed radically in the Southeast, will deepen the zone’s redundancy in national political schemes.
In the meantime, as far as the eyes can see, Peter Obi remains the Southeast’s best bet for the 2027 or 2031 presidential election, but he cannot run as an independent candidate. This is why he should have invested in building a political party a decade ago. However, he must invest in building a viable political platform, much as he has invested in building an unassailable personal recognition as a credible public officer. He should now pick up the lessons from both APGA, which he once controlled fully, and LP, which he leads as its former presidential candidate, and build a platform or join in creating one that plays a long-defined political card, not only to serve a temporary political end.
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