Kenneth Okonkwo, spokesperson for the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has accused former Labour Party vice-presidential candidate Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed of suffering what he described as a “post-political identity crisis” following his experience alongside Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election.
Okonkwo made the claim during an interview on Arise TV’s Daybreak on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, while reacting to Baba-Ahmed’s recent assessment that none of the leading contenders for the 2027 presidency, including Obi, has the capacity to move Nigeria forward.
Okonkwo, who worked alongside Obi and Baba-Ahmed during the 2023 presidential campaign, said the political experience and subsequent crisis within the Labour Party may have influenced Baba-Ahmed’s current view of Obi.
“I understand why he made his comment about Peter Obi, because we were in the same trenches together, and I can tell you that he may be suffering from what I call post-political identity crisis,” Okonkwo said.
He recalled the optimism that surrounded the 2023 campaign, saying many participants believed the movement would usher in a new political direction for Nigeria.
“After working with Peter Obi, you run the risk of suffering that, because we all came in in 2023 with high hopes, and we thought that a new Nigeria is birthed,” he said.
According to Okonkwo, the political movement that rallied around Obi was unusual because many of its supporters were motivated by what they could contribute rather than what they expected to receive.
“For the first time in my life, I saw people coming into an association for what they can give, and nobody was talking about what he can take, what he can receive,” he said.
He, however, said the subsequent collapse of the political structure within the Labour Party left some participants disillusioned, attributing what he described as the failure to Obi’s alleged “incompetence and incapacity” to manage the party’s affairs.
“So, if such an association ends the way the Labour Party ended, you will see everybody coming out with political trauma, because that spoke of incompetence and incapacity of the political leader then called Peter Obi to manage the affairs,” Okonkwo said.
The ADC spokesperson argued that supporters had provided resources for the political project and expected effective leadership in return.
“When everything is provided for you, the people are willing to do something for you. They were willing to provide resources. They were only asking for one thing, and that’s leadership. And you could not provide it,” he said.
Okonkwo also referred to an earlier statement attributed to Baba-Ahmed that he could no longer do anything for Obi after the Labour Party experience, interpreting it as an indication that the former vice-presidential candidate had lost confidence in his former principal.
“That was why in his (Baba-Ahmed) own words, he said after Labour Party, he couldn’t do anything again for Peter Obi. In other words, after what happened in Labour Party, I lost confidence in him. I was there with him,” he added.
Baba-Ahmed, who was Obi’s running mate on the Labour Party ticket in the 2023 presidential election, had recently argued that none of the major figures expected to contest the 2027 presidency possessed the capacity to transform Nigeria.
He reportedly maintained that several of the leading contenders had previously been part of the political establishment he blamed for the country’s present challenges.
