Nigerians voted for what I stood for, not ethnicity — Peter Obi

By Miftaudeen Raji

Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, has explained why Nigerians voted for him, adding that Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers state worked against him in the February 25 presidential election in the state.

Obi stated this while speaking on Arise TV’s The Morning Show on Monday.

According to Obi, the people, who voted for him did not do so on the basis of ethnicity, saying the electorate knew what he stood for. He added that he even got more votes from Lagos indigenes than those referred to as “visitors.”

He said, “In the South-East, it is a similar situation, people know me, people know what I stand for, people know I have kept my promises. People know I’ve kept to what I have said.

“It is a simple thing, people go about and say, oh! he got votes in Lagos because of the Igbo, and I ask how many Igbos live in Lagos? I got more votes from indigenes in Lagos than those who you can call visitors.

“Are the Igbo in Nasarawa, are the Igbo in Plateau, are the Igbo in Abuja? In Rivers, where you know that the governor came out against me and everything, I still… If the real votes of Rivers were counted, Reuben, I won. I had over 50 something per cent of the vote.

“The other two parties were sharing the others,” he said.

Recall that Wike had recently said that Obi remained the hero of the elections, saying power would have remained in the North if the LP standard bearer didn’t contest.

Wike, who addressed a town hall with Igbo traders in Port Harcourt, the state capital, on Saturday said despite Obi not having been declared the winner, his participation in the election guaranteed the emergence of a southerner as the President-elect.

According to the governor, the states where Obi recorded victories would have been won by the Peoples Democratic Party, thereby retaining power in the North.

“In this election that we just did,” he said, “Obi is my hero, as far as I’m concerned. If he didn’t contest, power would have remained in the North.”

In Rivers, the President-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress won after polling a total of 231,591 vites from the 23 local government areas of the state.

The APC won 14 local government areas, the Labour Party, five, while the PDP won four.

“From the final collated results, the APC polled 231,591, while the Labour Party scored 175,071 and the PDP, 88,468 to come second and third respectively,” the state Collation Officer, Prof Charles Adias, had said.