Former Jigawa governor Sule Lamido has berated Labour Party’s presidential candidate Peter Obi as a “morally compromised” politician. 

He also described Mr Obi’s presidential ambition as a “social media thing.” 

“The younger generation goes after fancy things,” Mr Lamido, a 73-year-old career politician, said. “Peter Obi is morally compromised, he should have stayed in the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, and promoted the party in Nigeria.” 

“He came from a sectional party, a party from a particular enclave and that is what made him what he is,” Mr Lamido continued, “Now, if he believes in the history of APGA and his own philosophy after coming to PDP, he shouldn’t have gone to the Labour Party.”

Mr Lamido asserted that Mr Obi was “now becoming nomadic, going from party to party but he is a good man.”

“What is happening with him is a social media thing,” Mr Lamido added. 

Mr Lamido, a PDP chieftain, said this in an interview with Vanguard newspaper on Saturday. 

In the 2019 presidential election, Mr Obi was the running mate to former vice president Atiku Abubakar on the platform of the PDP.  He left the party in May to pick the Labour Party ticket barely two weeks later.

Mr Atiku is again the candidate of the PDP for the 2023 election and he enjoys the support of fellow northerner, Mr Lamido.

Much of Mr Obi’s run for presidency is being run on the sentiment that a southerner should succeed President Buhari who hails from the North, after eight years in power.

Thousands of Nigerian youths online, tagged OBIdients, are mobilising support for the Labour Party candidate whom they see as a positive departure from old political war horses that have ruined their chances to prosperity.

Speaking  at a conference organised by the Revival House of International Church (RHOGIC), Abuja a few weeks ago, Mr Obi charged Nigerians to take back their country from “mad politicians” who have taken over politics.

“Mad people have taken over our politics,” Mr Obi said. “We can’t allow this gangsterism to continue, Nigerians should take back their country. Seventy per cent of those who are in politics today should not have any reason to be there. I have said it, politics in Nigeria is a case where lunatics have taken over the asylum.”