By Abiola Olawale
The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, on Monday, met with the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, raising fresh speculations ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Atiku, a former vice president, took to his social media accounts to share pictures of him and Obi as they met at his residence. He, however, kept mum on the details of the meeting.
Atiku wrote: “It was my honour and privilege to host @PeterObi today. -AA”
The latest meeting between the duo comes amid speculations of a possible creation of a strong alliance that will oust the All Progressives Congress (APC), from power, in the forthcoming election.
While the duo had jointly contested as presidential candidate and vice-presidential candidate in the 2019 general election under the platform of the PDP, Obi went his separate way, dumping the party for the Labour Party where he was elected as the flagbearer of the party during the last General election.
In 2019, with Obi on the ballot as running mate to Atiku, the PDP garnered 1,693,485 votes (75 per cent) from the five states of the South-East.
Obi in his resignation letter then said that the ideologies of the PDP no longer aligned with his. However, several insider sources have said Obi dumped the PDP because he knew he wouldn’t get the presidential ticket or Vice presidential ticket.
The inability of the PDP to put its house together would later hurt the party as they lost the election to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who contested on the platform of the APC.
Tinubu won the election with 36.61% of the vote, scoring a total of 8,794,726 votes.
Atiku polled a total of 6,984,520, while Obi scored 6,101,533.
Since the outcome of the election, many have wondered if the PDP would have won the last election with Obi and Atiku running together.
