Sowore Brands Datti, Peter Obi as 'Military Apologists'

Omoyele Sowore, the African Action Congress (AAC) presidential candidate, has leveled accusations against Datti Baba-Ahmed and Peter Obi, labeling them as 'military apologists'. Sowore claims their alleged connections to former military leaders raise significant questions about their political positions.

These remarks were made during an interview aired on ARISE NEWS on Tuesday. Sowore stated, “These guys are military apologists. It is not only Datti Baba-Ahmed that is a military apologist; Peter Obi himself is a military apologist. They are all Abacha’s boys; Datti was a Babangida person, Peter Obi is an Abacha boy, and they all worked with the military. Whenever they want to seek approval or validation, they always go back to the homes of the military generals.”

Furthermore, Sowore alleged that Datti Baba-Ahmed, Peter Obi, and President Bola Tinubu share entrenched ties with Nigeria’s political and military elite. He pointed to their interactions with Tinubu as evidence of relationships that transcend their public political disagreements.

Recounting an incident, Sowore said, “I met Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed for the first time during a peace agreement signing event in 2023. I was sitting next to him while he was occupying the seat meant for Peter Obi. Next to me was Tinubu, who is now president. When Tinubu walked in, and Datti was calling Tinubu ‘Uncle.’ He was almost kneeling down for Tinubu. I was looking at his conduct right there, comparing it to what was going on on the internet regarding how they were discussing Tinubu as a terrible candidate. I said to myself, these guys are presenting a double-faced, Janus-faced persona to the public. I am not saying that Tinubu is not his uncle or that he shouldn’t respect him, but that level of fawning around him showed me that these guys don’t have any real disagreement with Tinubu.”

Sowore added that Peter Obi later arrived at the event. He narrated his own departure: “When the event was over, I stood up and left. I didn’t greet Tinubu; I just left. I looked back five seconds later, and all of the guys we held meetings with who were busy in public were lined up—Peter Obi, Dan Nwanyanwu, all of them were lining up to greet him.”

He expressed his astonishment, questioning how candidates who publicly discussed strategies to defeat Tinubu and expressed disrespect for him would then queue up to shake his hand. “I was the only one who didn’t wait behind,” Sowore asserted. He subsequently confronted them about this perceived hypocrisy.

Sowore also challenged the rationale behind presenting Obi as a presidential candidate in 2023, especially in light of recent remarks by Datti Baba-Ahmed. He quoted, “I’m saying to you: if you knew that your candidate, Peter Obi, was not competent to be president in 2023, why did you have to drag Nigeria through that whole process of presenting such a candidate when you knew it and are now saying it?”

Dismissing the significance of Obi’s strong youth following in 2023, Sowore argued that popularity alone did not establish competence. He insisted that voters should instead critically examine how the former Labour Party candidate was initially presented to the public. He maintained that the controversy surrounding Datti Baba-Ahmed’s recent comments warranted further scrutiny, particularly what Sowore described as an apparent contradiction between Baba-Ahmed’s role as Obi’s running mate in 2023 and his current assessment of Obi’s suitability for the presidency.

Sowore concluded, “This whole idea that he was popular and youth followed him, It’s all part of the campaigning that brought us here today. It’s exactly that: you can package a candidate and then discover that everything you did in packaging made people fall for what was false and fraudulent. Then, that person who was the heartbeat from that effort has now come out and said, ‘The person that was presented to you in 2023 wasn’t who you thought he was. If he were to be president today, your problems would be compounded.’ That’s what brought this conversation we’re having today, and I’m saying we should interrogate that and discuss it. I don’t think we’re discussing why he was popular; we’re discussing how he became popular and on which grounds he became popular. That was my position then: that all these things were packaged to fool the public and fool some youths.”