Labour Party leader Peter Obi has called on Nigerians to vote out President Bola Tinubu in the next election, citing the President’s brief, 10-minute airport visit to Jos and his failure to fulfill 2023 campaign promises regarding electricity and power tariffs.
Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, has issued a formal call for Nigerians to vote out President Bola Tinubu in the next general election, accusing the administration of a “glaring display of disregard” for campaign promises. In a pointed statement shared on his X (Twitter) account on Saturday, April 4, 2026, Obi specifically referenced the President’s recent 10-minute stopover at the Yakubu Gowon Airport in Jos to visit victims of the Palm Sunday massacre. Obi criticized the President’s justification for his brief stay, quoting Tinubu as saying, “You have no light here – I fly out in ten minutes.” Obi argued that this exchange proved a lack of empathy and a failure of leadership, noting, “At a time when Nigerians are enduring days without power, our leaders cannot even stay a few minutes without it.”
Central to Obi’s critique was a reminder of President Tinubu’s 2023 campaign pledge, where he reportedly stated: “If I don’t give you constant electricity in four years, don’t vote for me for a second term.” Obi contended that the President has fundamentally broken this trust, pointing to a decline in national power performance over the last three years. “When he took office in 2023, Nigeria had a power supply of over 4,000 megawatts and lower tariffs. Today, the electricity power supply is less than 4,000 megawatts on the average, and Nigerians are paying higher tariffs,” Obi noted. He further highlighted the widening gap between Nigeria and the rest of the continent, stating that Nigeria’s per capita electricity consumption of 144 kWh is currently below 30% of the African average of 617 kWh.
The former Anambra State Governor characterized the President’s inability to remain in a darkened airport to console grieving families as a symbolic failure of the “Renewed Hope” agenda. He maintained that the administration’s struggle to manage the power sector has left the country with the lowest per capita electricity consumption in the world relative to its population. By recalling the specific 2023 ultimatum set by Tinubu himself, Obi framed the upcoming election as a necessary accountability measure for the electorate. “In a glaring display of disregard for promises and a lack of trust, President Tinubu… stated that one of the reasons for his 10-minute stay was that the airport had no electricity,” Obi concluded, urging citizens to remember the unmet benchmarks for power and economic stability.
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