2027 Election: Has ADC Coalition Adopted Peter Obi as Presidential Candidate? Reality Comes to Light
- The ADC was recently adopted as the flagship platform of the opposition coalition ahead of the 2027 presidential election in Nigeria
- Peter Obi and other influential politicians openly aligned with the ADC coalition platform, although several of them have yet to formally declare for the party
- A post claimed Obi has emerged as the ADC's anointed candidate; Legit.ng's fact check showed that parties cannot yet hold primaries to select their candidates
Legit.ng journalist Ridwan Adeola Yusuf has over 9 years of experience covering public affairs and governance.
FCT, Abuja - Ahead of the 2027 election, a widely-shared Facebook video alleged that the African Democratic Congress (ADC) endorsed Labour Party (LP) chieftain, Peter Obi, as its presidential candidate.
Legit.ng reports that Obi has gained in popularity among young people in particular, many who call themselves ‘Obidients.’
Source: Facebook
The 64-year-old was Nigeria’s third-placed presidential candidate in the 2023 election, receiving about 6 million votes, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), just behind former vice president Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the time.
Since the country’s return to democracy in 1999, Nigeria’s presidency has rotated between two political parties, the PDP now in opposition, and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). But Obi has inspired a zealous movement of mostly youths and disrupted Nigeria’s traditional two-man presidential contest.
Obi’s supporters say he has brought a simple style to leadership that downplays the privileges of power and has done away with political “godfatherism”, in which an individual handpicks an often less influential leadership candidate to exert influence over them, an entrenched concept in Nigerian politics.
In early July, the ADC coalition process was held at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
Source: Twitter
Obi and other politicians from various regions of the country attended the official coalition event at the venue. They vowed to unseat President Bola Tinubu in the 2027 election.
Meanwhile, Obi is yet to be formally inducted into the ADC.
A caption of a Facebook video shared claiming the ADC coalition has adopted Obi as its presidential candidate reads:
“Watch the moment ADC announced Peter Obi as their Presıdential candıdate 2027 go hot o (sic)."
The 3 minutes 38 seconds video by blogger Top O Onyeozizi has garnered 1.4 million views, 36,000 reactions, and 4,600 comments since it was published on Thursday, July 3, 2025. It has been shared thousands of times.
The video showed a man with an ADC insignia around his neck addressing a gathering, saying:
“We have decided that the Obi-Yusuf Datti movement is a worthy cause to endorse”.
A banner featuring the ADC's logo is visible in the background.
The video also bears the watermark of Channels TV.
Verification
2023 video of ADC
Using the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify, Legit.ng extracted keyframes from the video and ran a reverse image search.
This led to a video posted on the verified YouTube page of Channels Television.
The video includes the same footage as the one circulating with recent claims. However, it was published more than two years ago, on February 20, 2023.
Premium Times reported on the past endorsement by the factional ADC group.
Ahead of the 2023 general election, Mani Ibrahim, chairman, ADC’s board of trustees (BoT), told a news conference that Obi is the best man to be the next president.
Ibrahim assured that ADC leadership would do everything within its power and position to ask its members and supporters to vote for Obi and Datti Baba-Ahmed, his running mate at the time.
Verdict
The video being circulated with claims that the ADC coalition has endorsed Obi as its presidential candidate is old.
Since the ADC coalition unveiling ceremony at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, the alliance has not held another public event of such proportion.
Also, political parties cannot yet hold primaries to select their candidates for the 2027 election.
Prophet Bamidele predicts Peter Obi's fate
Earlier, Legit.ng reported that Prophet Elijah Bamidele of the Christ House of Prayer and Deliverance Ministry, Lagos, claimed that Obi cannot emerge victorious in the 2027 presidential election in Nigeria.
In a recent video posted on his official Facebook page, seen by Legit.ng, the Edo-born preacher asked Obi to wait till 2031.
Source: Legit.ng
