Former Minister of Education, Dr Oby Ezekwesili, has reaffirmed her support for Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), ahead of the 2027 general election.
Ezekwesili also called for a new political trajectory focused on improving governance, restoring human dignity and addressing systemic failures that have prevented Nigeria’s political system from improving the lives of citizens. She made the remarks on Arise TV’s Prime Time programme on Monday monitored by The News Chronicle.
Ezekwesili, a former Vice-President for the World Bank’s Africa Region, co-founder of the #BringBackOurGirls movement and founder of the School of Politics, Policy and Governance, said she would still choose Obi if the same leadership criteria she used during the 2023 presidential election were applied.
She said Obi would rank higher than the other major presidential candidates based on her assessment of leadership and governance.
“In 2023, I made it very clear that, using the criteria on which I see leadership either fail or succeed to govern well, the other two candidates score considerably lower than what you would assign to former Governor Obi, and so I was going to stand with Governor Obi.
“I don’t think that anything has really significantly changed,” she said.
However, Ezekwesili cautioned against making Obi or any other individual presidential candidate the sole focus of discussions about Nigeria’s future. “Don’t make this about Peter Obi. I don’t want us to personalise. I’m interested in the construct,” she stated.
The former minister lamented what she described as the declining value attached to human life and dignity in Nigeria, urging citizens to take greater ownership of the electoral process by voting for leaders who represent their interests.
She argued that Nigeria’s current political “design” had failed and needed to be fundamentally reworked.
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“What we have to show for it is the complete collapse of the dignity of the human being and the dignity of life. It’s like we have zeroed out on the value of life, and yet we continue to think that somehow, if we just keep doing elections, we’ll be fine,” she said.
Ezekwesili urged Nigerians to vote for themselves by making conscious choices at the polls and rejecting the notion that the country’s current situation was inevitable.
“The greatest tragedy of the country is this resignation—that this is our destiny. I say no, this is by design. It is not our destiny; this is by design. This design needs to be challenged. The design that we run right now has not worked for us; we do need to design again,” she said.
She further urged competent Nigerians to participate actively in politics by contesting elective positions at the local, state and federal levels.
