By Sentry

A Silent but bruising war is raging in the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC) between two unlikely adversaries, namely the party’s presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi and his long-dated supporter, Aisha Yesufu.

Without an iota of doubt, Yesufu had been one of the most vocal supporters of Obi since the build-up to the 2023 elections during which Obi became the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP). She went everywhere with Obi during the electioneering, shouting herself hoarse and devoting every ounce of her energy to the campaigns in the hope that Obi would win the presidential election.

As it turned out, Obi lost the election with a wide margin, coming a distant third behind President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and former vice president Atiku Abubakar.

Still, Yesufu did not relax her support for Obi. As the 2027 elections gathered momentum, she once again threw her weight behind the presidential aspirant, following him first to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) upon his defection from the Labour Party and then to the NDC.

Matters, however, became complicated when they arrived at NDC and Obi automatically picked the party’s presidential ticket while Aisha’s hope of an easy ride to picking the senatorial ticket of the party for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was dashed by the powers that be.

“No, no, no, no, don’t even go there,” one of the party leaders was said to have told her immediately she made her ambition known.

In place of Yesufu, another woman whose face was largely unknown in political circles was handed the ticket; a development that sent Yesufu into high dudgeon, causing her to accuse the party’s leadership of marginalising her. “I am not even asking for a level playing field; I only needed a field,” she said.

The grapevine has it that things have not been the same between her and Obi since the unsavoury experience and she has been waging a silent war against the NDC presidential candidate. Already, she has declined the party’s request that she should be on Obi’s campaign train for the 2027 election.

Yesufu is said to be unable to understand how Obi’s running mate, Dr. Rabiu Kwakwaso could push his loyalists in the party to obtain desired tickets not just in the north but also in the Southeast such that the party was beginning to look like an arm of the Kwakwansiyya Movement while Obi could neither stand nor push for his own loyalists in the sharing of party tickets.

Source: The Nation