As Netizens react to Controversial Interview
By Olawale Lamina
Two pro-democracy bodies, The Democratic Front, TMG and the Tinubu Media Support Group, TSMG have lambasted the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi for making fallacious and inaccurate assertions on Arise television interview and that nothing in the latter’s narratives suggests he could have done better that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in handling the nation’s economy.
In a separate statements issued over the weekend, TSMG described the Obi’s interview as “nothing but sheer bluster filled with hot air,” while its counterpart, TMG simply argued that the Labour Party’s presidential candidate “lacks the capacity to do what he claimed.”
In the controversial interview on Arise TV, Obi had criticized the Tinubu-led administration saying among others that there is no democracy in Nigeria, especially when there is no vibrant and independent judicial system, adding that Nigerians are being harassed for lack of freedom of speech.
In a swift reaction, a statement by TMSG Chairman, Emeka Nwankpa and the Secretary, Dapo Okubanjo, said: “We watched Mr Peter Obi’s recent interview on Arise TV’s Prime Time and also read the transcripts of his assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s handling of the national economy and other sundry political issues, and what came across was nothing but sheer bluster filled with hot air.
“As usual, he threw around ‘productivity’, the same buzzword he used during his ill-fated political campaign when he argued that he could have made the country more productive in two years.
“He spoke as if productivity was a button on a switchboard he could punch to drive change automatically and deliberately ignored the fact of what the Tinubu administration has been doing to drive positive political and economic changes.
“We wonder what Obi could have done differently, for instance, with the National Tax reform bills which have been at the National Assembly since October 2024 and which took more than a year of consultation and brainstorming by a Presidential Committee set up in August 2023 to shape.
“If Nigeria were not a democracy like Obi now says as part of his new communication strategy, we dare say that President Tinubu would have started implementing the tax reforms, which were designed to boost productivity, within a few months of assuming office.
“But only people who understand the fundamentals of democracy will appreciate the process the Tinubu tax reforms have been going through since at least August 2023.
“And talking about productivity, it is a statement of fact that Nigeria has in the last 22 months witnessed a major boost in daily crude production and also recorded N17bn of investments in the oil sector as a result of reforms instituted by new policy directives of the Tinubu administration.”
TMSG also spoke on Peter Obi’s other claims, including his assertion that he would have fixed Primary Healthcare Centers nationwide in two years.
“In addition, we were taken aback by Obi’s brag that he would have fixed Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) and primary schools in two years if he were president.
“This is laughable, especially coming from a man who was Anambra governor for 8 years, yet it just emerged that a local government as prominent as Onitsha South only had a public hospital in 2025, courtesy of Governor Charles Soludo.
“Besides, it is surprising that a former governor does not know that PHCs and primary schools are largely the responsibilities of state and local governments, with the federal government only saddled with playing a secondary or supportive role and indeed, the Tinubu administration has been living up to its responsibilities to PHCs.
“And as usual, there was no way a Peter Obi interview would have ended without exaggeration and outright lie as he falsely claimed that Tinubu met a debt of N17 trillion but took it to N170 trillion.
“Only a barefaced, fake news merchant seeking political validation would make such a wild claim, especially as the Debt Management Office (DMO) recently put the entire public debt as of May 2023 at N87 trillion, so we wonder where Obi got his own figures from. Also, the current public debt profile is nowhere near his claim of N170 trillion.
“How could he also have suggested that the cost of debt servicing was increasing without him immediately being fact-checked by his interviewers?
“All Nigerians, aside from those bent on playing politics, should know, by now, that the debt service ratio has been reduced from 96% in 2023 to about 68%.
“So we were not under any illusion that the former Anambra state governor would never see any good in what the Tinubu administration is doing but what he said in that TV interview did not show he could have done better than the incumbent President in two years,” the group added.
On its part, The Democratic Front, TDF, also disagreed with Mr. Peter Obi on the score that he could have performed better than President Tinubu
In a statement signed by the Chairman, Mallam Danjuma Muhammad and the Secretary, Chief Wale Adedayo, the group stated that Obi lacks the capacity to do what he claimed during the interview because his posturing was based on unsound arguments and factual inaccuracies.
TDF read: “Obi’s inaccurate narratives at the media interview with Arise TV can best be described as deliberate mischief aimed at misleading the Nigerian public.
“His postulations on boosting national productivity have embarrassingly revealed the paucity of knowledge and shallow understanding with which he was struggling to create relevance for himself. He did nothing but end up boxing the air.
“We believe that even an armchair economist will not assess a country’s productivity without recourse to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as Obi did in that interview with Arise TV.
“It was therefore shocking to see the former Anambra state governor who inordinately covets the presidency insisting on the TV that there is no productivity in the economy under Tinubu, despite the tremendous contributions of critical sectors like Services, Agriculture and Mining to the nation’s GDP which impressively rose by 3.84% in Q4 of 2024.”
Giving insight into what the Tinubu administration is doing in both the education and health sectors, TDF dismissed Obi’s false assertions that he could transform Nigeria’s education and health sectors if had been President in the last two years.
The group was quite to add that Obi should wake up to the reality of what the present administration has achieved, especially in the education and health sectors, saying that, “The education sector has never seen a policy or programme as effective, and pragmatic as the National Educational Loan Fund (NELFUND), the group said.
“The student loan scheme has brought great relief and hope to indigent students of Nigerian universities. The ever-increasing list of beneficiaries of the student loan stands at over 500,000 undergraduates as of March 2025.
“In our view, the NELFUND policy is not only novel but has also been impactful.
“Furthermore, we are taken aback by the appalling ignorance which Obi displayed about the operations of the Primary Healthcare Centres (PHC) in Nigeria.
“In case the Labour Party chieftain does not know, the need to enable local governments to deliver on basic responsibilities like primary healthcare was the prime motive behind Tinubu’s efforts to ensure that they get direct allocation from FAAC.
“This is because the provision of
primary healthcare services are a major responsibility of the local governments, without prejudice to the interventionist efforts of the Federal Government.
“In addition to empowering the local governments through direct access to allocations from the federation account, President Tinubu has also initiated measures to provide free Caesarian Sections to pregnant mothers across the country, reduced the cost of dialysis by 70% for kidney patients, and granted a duty free waiver for the importation of pharmaceutical products to make drugs cheaper for Nigerians.
“Obi’s flip-flop and penchant for double-speak was obvious during the Arise TV interview when he said political alliances brought Nigeria to its present State. Yet, he confirmed that he was going into an alliance with other political figures ahead of 2027.
Also, in one breath, Obi criticized the nation’s external borrowings, but in another, he promised “to channel borrowed funds into critical sectors” if elected President.
“What is clear to many Nigerians is that the critical sectors of the Nigerian economy have been through positive transformation in the last twenty-two months of the Tinubu administration,” it said.
The group called on Nigerians to remain resolute in their support of the President in order to ensure a stainable economic growth and development.
The Pinnacle Times can reveal that the Obi interview has equally led to expression of divergent views by netizens across different political divides.
Abdulraaman Abdulazeez reacted on the Facebook saying, “Nigerians really dodged bullet. With Mr statistics that no Indian can solve .”
Great Kassi said: “The interview demarket him cos it shows his lack of understanding of governance and policy.”
Bukola Gbolahan Olayinka said: “Ahhh. You tried oooo. I just changed it when I saw it on arise yesterday. He admitted he would have done those policies but in a better way. Though he had denied it before now. Bad. Market obi.”
“He won jagaban in his Lagos and sitting president in the state capital,” stated Emmanuel Uwakwe
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