Kwankwaso Declares Peter Obi Highly Popular Across Nigeria, Warns 2027 Politics Must Transcend Tribe and Religion

It takes a certain kind of political courage — or perhaps political calculation — for a Northern Muslim chieftain to stand before a national audience and declare that a Christian Igbo man from the Southeast is one of the most popular politicians in Nigeria. Including in the North.

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But that is precisely what Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso has done. And in the febrile atmosphere of early 2027 electoral positioning, the statement carries weight that extends far beyond a Sunday television interview.

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The Interview That Has Set Political Circles Talking

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Akahi News gathered that Kwankwaso, a chieftain of the Nigeria Democratic Congress and former presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, made the remarks during an appearance on Trust TV on Sunday — speaking directly to the political landscape taking shape ahead of the 2027 general elections.

The interview was not routine. In it, Kwankwaso offered a frank assessment of what political success in Nigeria requires, what Peter Obi represents as a political force, and what the Kwankwasiyya movement stands for in a country where identity politics has long been the default operating system of electoral competition.

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He did not speak in the careful, hedged language of a politician trying to offend no one. He spoke like a man who has thought carefully about what Nigeria’s political future must look like — and who is placing his bets accordingly.

On Peter Obi: An Acknowledgement That Will Not Be Forgotten

The most striking statement of the interview was also, arguably, the most generous one any prominent Northern politician has publicly made about the former Anambra governor and 2023 Labour Party presidential candidate.

“If you look at it, Peter Obi is a very popular politician in the entire South and many parts of Northern Nigeria, and you cannot take that from him,” Kwankwaso said — adding in the same breath: “the same with the Kwankwasiyya movement.”

The acknowledgement is significant on multiple levels.

First, it confirms what the 2023 election results — and the months of political conversations since — have been suggesting: that Peter Obi’s appeal is not simply a Southeast phenomenon or a youth social media bubble. It is a genuine, geographically distributed political force with roots in parts of the North that conventional wisdom might not expect.

Akahi News learnt that Kwankwaso’s framing — placing Obi’s popularity alongside the Kwankwasiyya movement as comparable political currencies — is also strategically interesting. It positions both as cross-regional movements rather than identity-based ones. And it implicitly raises the question, in the minds of political watchers, of whether these two forces will find a convergence point before 2027 or operate in parallel.

In the 2023 election, the Kwankwasiyya movement and the Obidient movement were, in effect, drawing from some overlapping wells — young, frustrated, reform-minded voters who had lost patience with the established parties. They ran separately and, some analysts argue, split votes that together might have produced a different result.

Whether that calculus changes before 2027 is now one of the more intriguing open questions in Nigerian politics.

The Call That Goes Beyond Courtesy

Beyond the acknowledgement of Obi’s popularity, Kwankwaso used the Trust TV platform to make a broader appeal — one that challenges the fundamental architecture of Nigerian electoral politics.

“We must look beyond tribe and religion,” he said. “We are Northerners and Muslims, and everybody knows that, but we can’t play politics without Christians, Southeast, South-South or South-west.”

This is not a new argument in Nigerian political discourse. The Constitution itself, through its federal character provisions, enshrines the principle that national leadership must be broadly representative. The concept of a “national spread” has been a feature of Nigerian electoral law and practice for decades.

But the context in which Kwankwaso is making this argument matters. He is not speaking from the comfortable position of someone who has just won an election and can afford to be magnanimous. He is speaking as a man whose political movement — formidable in Kano and parts of the Northwest — is assessing its options ahead of a 2027 race that is already being framed as consequential.

And what he is saying, stripped of diplomatic softening, is this: the era of a candidate winning a Nigerian presidential election on the strength of a single region, a single religion, or a single ethnic coalition is over. Or at least it should be. And any political force that fails to understand this will fail.

It was alleged by no one — it is simply the lesson of recent Nigerian electoral history — that the winning coalition in any credible 2027 presidential race must be genuinely national. Must speak to the Northwest and the Southeast simultaneously. Must have a message that lands in Kano and in Enugu, in Sokoto and in Lagos, without needing to be fundamentally different in each place.

The Kwankwasiyya Movement and Its Young Constituency

Akahi News learnt that Kwankwaso spoke with evident pride about the character of his movement’s support base — and in doing so, offered a self-portrait of Kwankwasiyya that distinguishes it from the patron-client political networks that dominate much of Nigerian politics.

“We are lucky that our supporters are mainly young men and women who are looking for a way out. They are not looking for their brothers or their sisters or somebody close,” he said.

Young people looking for a way out. Not looking for family connections. Not seeking proximity to power for personal extraction. Looking for a way out — of poverty, of unemployment, of the grinding frustration of a generation that has educated itself only to find that the doors remain closed.

That description resonates beyond Kwankwasiyya. It is the description of a generation of Nigerians — in Kano and in Aba, in Calabar and in Abuja — who showed up in enormous numbers for Peter Obi in 2023, who have maintained the political energy of the Obidient movement into 2026, and who are now being courted by every serious political actor preparing for 2027.

The question of how that generational energy will be channelled — whether it will be captured by a genuinely reformist candidacy or absorbed into established parties that have learned to speak the language of change without embodying it — is the central question of Nigerian politics in the run-up to 2027.

2027: The Race That Has Already Begun

Kwankwaso’s remarks on Trust TV are part of a broader landscape of political activity that has been intensifying since well before the calendar turned to 2026.

President Tinubu’s second-term ambition has been openly discussed — including, as Akahi News had earlier reported, in the President’s own remarks at the Africa CEO Forum in Rwanda. The APC’s machinery is being positioned for a 2027 campaign that will run on the narrative of necessary reforms and stabilising economic outcomes.

The opposition landscape remains fragmented. The PDP has not resolved the internal tensions that complicated its 2023 campaign. The Labour Party’s position relative to Peter Obi’s future political plans remains a subject of active discussion. And figures like Kwankwaso are navigating their options — which party, which coalition, which arrangement gives their political capital the best chance of translating into national influence.

Into this complex landscape, Kwankwaso’s Sunday interview introduces several data points that will be analysed carefully.

His endorsement of Obi’s national popularity is a signal. His call for cross-regional coalition-building is a signal. His positioning of the Kwankwasiyya movement as youth-driven and reform-oriented rather than regionally captive is a signal.

Signals, in Nigerian politics, are rarely accidental.

What the Ordinary Nigerian Makes of All This

There is a version of this political analysis that is entirely about power — about which politician aligns with whom, which party absorbs which movement, which coalition assembles the votes to reach Aso Rock.

And then there is the version that matters to the ordinary Nigerian — the version that asks: will any of this produce a government that reduces the price of food? That fixes the roads? That makes the schools work? That ensures that a young person who studies hard has a job to go to when they graduate?

Kwankwaso’s invocation of young people “looking for a way out” is the bridge between these two versions. Because the young Nigerians he is describing are not interested in political analysis for its own sake. They are interested in outcomes. In whether their lives will be materially different under whoever wins in 2027 than they are today under whoever won in 2023.

That question — whether a coalition built on cross-regional appeal and youth energy will translate into governance that actually delivers — is the one that 2027 must eventually answer. The coalitions can be assembled. The manifestos can be written. The speeches about moving beyond tribe and religion can be given.

But when will the common Nigerian — in Kano and in Onitsha, in Calabar and in Maiduguri — feel it in the weight of what they carry home from the market?

That is the test. Not the interview. Not the coalition. The governance.

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A North-South Conversation That Nigeria Needs

Strip away the electoral strategy and the political positioning, and what Kwankwaso is really doing in this interview is initiating — or continuing — a conversation that Nigeria has too rarely had honestly.

Can a Northerner and a Southerner, a Muslim and a Christian, genuinely trust each other enough to build a political project that serves both? Not as a matter of constitutional compliance or federal character box-ticking, but as a genuine, committed partnership toward shared national goals?

The cynical answer, forged in the disappointments of Nigerian political history, is: no. That every cross-regional alliance eventually fractures along the original fault lines. That the unity is always temporary and the division always permanent.

The hopeful answer — the one that Kwankwaso seems to be reaching toward, and that millions of young Nigerians reached toward when they voted Obidient in 2023 — is that this time might be different. That the generation entering political maturity now is less captive to the identity categories of their parents. That a politics built on competence, accountability, and genuine national interest is not merely aspirational but achievable.

Which answer turns out to be correct is what 2027 will tell us.

The Road Ahead

Akahi News will continue to monitor the evolving political alignments ahead of the 2027 general elections — tracking the movements of key figures like Kwankwaso, the positioning of Peter Obi and the Labour Party, the APC’s re-election strategy under President Tinubu, and the search for a credible opposition coalition capable of presenting Nigerians with a genuine choice.

What is clear from Kwankwaso’s Sunday interview is that the conversation has begun in earnest. The camps are forming. The signals are being sent. And somewhere in the noise of political manoeuvring, the Nigerian voter — young, tired, hopeful, sceptical, and still, against all odds, engaged — is watching.

They deserve politicians who are watching back. Not just at each other across coalition tables. But at the country. At the ordinary life. At the question of what governance is actually for.

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