Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, has said he has no personal rift with former governor Peter Obi, describing their relationship as cordial despite disagreements over political and economic issues.\n<\/p>\n
Soludo said this in an interview with BBC News Igbo, on Monday, explaining that both families maintained close relationships but had different political interests.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPeter Obi and I are good friends. Our two families are on good terms. His wife gave birth to my child in the divine water, my wife gave birth to his child in the confirmation. But when it comes to politics, give me mine, give him his. It\u2019s politics that is being done,\u201d the governor said.\n<\/p>\n
He maintained that their political differences did not affect their personal relationship, adding that both men had supported different candidates during the Anambra governorship election.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has someone he thinks should be the governor of Anambra. I am also listening. He supported the person he wanted. But I won by the grace of God,\u201d Soludo said.\n<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s comments come amid renewed disagreements between him and Obi over the former governor\u2019s record in office and the financial position of Anambra State when he left office in 2014.\n<\/p>\n
In September, Obi and the Anambra State Government disagreed over claims that the former governor and his wife were godparents to Soludo\u2019s children.<\/p>\n
Obi had said he and his wife were godparents to Soludo\u2019s children, describing the relationship between the two families as cordial despite their political differences.<\/p>\n
However, the media aide to the Anambra First Lady, Daniel Ezeigwe, disputed the claim, explaining that Nonye Soludo was the confirmation godmother to Obi\u2019s daughter, while Obi\u2019s wife, Margaret, was the baptismal godmother to one of Soludo\u2019s daughters.\n<\/p>\n
Soludo also addressed his controversial 2022 article in which he questioned Obi\u2019s chances of winning the 2023 presidential election, clarifying that he did not predict that the former Anambra governor would lose.\n<\/p>\n
Asked whether he maintained his position ahead of the 2027 presidential election, Soludo said his earlier argument was that Obi\u2019s participation in the 2023 election would split opposition votes and make victory easier for the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Tinubu. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, I didn\u2019t say he wouldn\u2019t win. What I said was that it is impossible for someone who is a presidential candidate of a party to not even write a letter saying he is running,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
He added that his argument at the time was that Obi\u2019s emergence as a third-force candidate would take votes away from the Peoples Democratic Party and benefit Tinubu.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, I also wrote to him that his participation would take away a lot of votes from the PDP and make it easier for Tinubu to win,\u201d Soludo said.<\/p>\n
The governor further argued that an alliance among opposition parties would not automatically guarantee victory against an incumbent administration.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you have a united opposition, it still does not guarantee you get to defeat an incumbent. But that is even the starting point,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
Soludo also recalled that he personally invited Obi to join the All Progressives Grand Alliance in March 2022 to contest the presidency, saying their discussions initially focused on mobilising the Igbo people rather than merely securing political power.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was me myself who invited him to APGA so he could run, early March 2022 at Nnamdi Azikiwe University,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cBefore he ran for that office, it wasn\u2019t about him running and winning, but how we are going to mobilise the Igbo people.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe deliberate first before going into an alliance before seeking power. You don\u2019t just get power in Nigeria like that.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In November 2022, Soludo published an article titled History Beckons and I Will Not Be Silent, in which he questioned Obi\u2019s presidential ambition and wrote that the former governor could not win the election.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeter Obi knows that he can\u2019t and won\u2019t win,\u201d he wrote at the time.\n <\/p>\n
Source: <\/p>\n
Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, has said he has no personal rift with former governor Peter Obi, describing their relationship as cordial despite disagreements over political and economic issues. Soludo… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}