Kenneth Okonkwo, a former Labour Party chieftain and member of the opposition coalition, has alleged that Peter Obi’s pledge to serve only one term if elected president in 2023 was a calculated political move to gain northern support.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Friday, Okonkwo said the promise had little to do with personal ambition and everything to do with Nigeria’s fragile power-sharing arrangement, which heavily influences presidential elections.
“It was Atiku Abubakar who first said he was going to do one term. Then Peter Obi keyed into it because he knows that if he, as a younger person, does not make that promise, he loses the entire North,” Okonkwo explained.
Okonkwo said the strategy was aimed at addressing concerns over domination in a country where zoning, an informal arrangement that rotates power between North and South, remains a contentious political issue.
“So it’s purely a political strategy to say, ‘Look, I am not going to cut the eight years. I’m not going to shortchange you. So if I am elected, I will just do only four years to complete the eight years of the South.’ That’s just the whole idea about it,” he added.
The lawyer-turned-politician claimed the one-term concept was his own creation, designed as a winning formula for any opposition party trying to unseat an incumbent president.
“I was the one who propounded it as a theory, saying that any party that is serious about fighting an incumbent must have to say that whoever is going to contest should have to do one term so that no side will feel cheated,” he said.
He stressed that Nigeria’s political realities make such concessions necessary. “If you are a southerner and don’t agree to do one term, the northerners will say you want to do another eight years, which will offend the system. If you are a northerner and don’t agree to do one term, the southerners will say that means you want to cut us short early,” Okonkwo explained.
He insisted the pledge was not a sign of weakness but a deliberate tactic to build national consensus in a deeply divided country.
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