Anambra Central Senator Victor Umeh has said the writing was on the wall long before Peter Obi’s departure from the African Democratic Congress, suggesting that anyone paying close attention could see the arrangement was unlikely to end with Obi as the party’s presidential candidate.
Obi formally resigned from the ADC over the weekend — just months after joining in December 2025 — and moved to the Nigeria Democratic Congress alongside former Kano Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.
Speaking on Arise TV’s Prime Time, Umeh, who was himself a member of the ADC, said no one needed to spell out the situation to Obi directly. The signals, he argued, were plain enough for a perceptive person to read.
He traced part of the problem to how the coalition was originally assembled — describing it as a broad, loosely structured gathering of political figures from vastly different backgrounds, with no clear hierarchy or defining leadership identity. The expectation, he said, was that the alliance would gradually sort itself out and organically surface a candidate capable of mounting a credible national campaign. That process, however, never reached its intended conclusion.
Umeh pushed back against the suggestion that Obi was simply shopping for a more convenient route to a presidential ticket. He portrayed Obi as someone with a well-established aversion to money-driven political processes — a trait that, in a party environment where financial transactions are routine, would naturally create friction and eventually lead to an exit.
Umeh himself has since followed Obi out of the ADC and into the Nigeria Democratic Congress.
