What Peter Obi Says About National Assembly Support If Elected 

Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s nominee for president, has allayed concerns that, if he wins the presidency in the general election of 2023, he might not have the support of the National Assembly. 

A member of the audience who joined via Zoom during Obi’s Monday Chatham House speech brought up the issue, asking the former governor of Anambra State how he expected to win over the legislature if the Labour Party was not in charge of the National Assembly. 

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Obi allayed the anxieties by claiming that as governor of Anambra State, he had experienced a similar circumstance.

The candidate for the Labour Party’s presidential nomination said that when he was the governor of Anambra State, 30 of the assembly members did not belong to his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA.

“Quite frankly, I’ve been through this as a governor. When I was elected and sworn in as a governor I had 30 House members not from my party (APGA). In fact, nobody from my party was involved,” he said.

If he were elected president, he claimed that it wouldn’t be a problem to win over lawmakers who weren’t in his party since he would fight for what is right.

“As long as you’re pursuing what is right, everybody will go with you,” Obi said, adding that “…the legislators want development” and he was prepared to bring development to the nation.

“It becomes a problem when you’re pursuing transactional policies which will benefit you or you’re engaging in nepotism,” he added.

He asserted that there would be no need to worry about whether or not the legislative would cooperate with the administration if the constitution was upheld and inclusive governance that honored the nation’s diversity was practiced.