Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, former vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party, has made clear that his political trajectory runs on a separate track from that of his erstwhile running mate, Peter Obi — and he wants no ambiguity about it.
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Speaking on the Naija Unfiltered podcast, Baba-Ahmed explained why he parted ways with the Labour Party in favour of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), while Obi headed in the opposite direction toward the African Democratic Congress (ADC). The expectation, he acknowledged, was that the two men would move together. They did not.
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“They thought I would follow Peter Obi, but I had given enough sympathy then and I thought, as a leader, what he should do was to solve the problem, not abandon it,” Baba-Ahmed said.
The former senator’s central argument is one of political consistency: that walking away from a party at the first sign of internal crisis is not leadership — it is avoidance. The Labour Party’s troubles, he maintained, demanded resolution from within, not a mass exodus to untested ground.
He was pointed in his scepticism of Obi’s new coalition. “If Abure was a problem, what makes him think the Nwosu or the David Mark of the ADC will not be a problem? What makes him think the chairman of Seriake’s party, the NDC, will not be a problem? It’s the same thing wherever you go. Stay here and fix the problem,” he said.
Baba-Ahmed’s remarks arrive at a moment of considerable flux in Nigeria’s opposition landscape. With the 2027 general elections drawing closer, political figures are recalibrating allegiances, and the fracture lines that were always latent within the Labour Party’s 2023 coalition are now fully visible. The partnership that produced one of the most remarkable third-party performances in Nigerian electoral history has, in effect, dissolved — its two principals now seated in different parties, guided by different convictions, and pointing toward different futures.
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