Peter Obi has accused former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman Mahmood Yakubu of working for the opposition during the 2023 presidential election. He made the allegation in an exclusive ARISE News interview as he prepares for the 2027 presidential race on the platform of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC).
Obi said Yakubu assured Nigerians and the international community that INEC would conduct the poll properly. “The INEC Chairman convinced the world that he would do the right thing, when, in fact, he was working for the opposition,” he said. Obi presented the statement as his assessment of Yakubu’s conduct during the poll.
Obi said voters accepted INEC’s assurances instead of taking steps to protect their ballots. “In 2023, we took things for granted. We believed INEC. We believed what they said they would do,” he said. His argument centres on the trust voters placed in the electoral commission before the results were declared.
INEC declared Bola Tinubu the winner with 8,794,726 votes, followed by Atiku Abubakar with 6,984,520 and Obi with 6,101,533. Obi and the Labour Party challenged the result before the Presidential Election Petition Court, which dismissed the petition in September 2023.
The case then reached the Supreme Court, which dismissed Obi’s appeal on October 26, 2023 and upheld Tinubu’s victory. The legal challenge also raised questions about INEC’s use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) to transmit results.
Mahmood Yakubu left the commission in October 2025 after serving as chairman since 2015. Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan, SAN, replaced him and took the oath of office on October 23, 2025.
On September 7, 2026, Obi urged voters to “safeguard and defend your votes from the polling unit through the final declaration of results.” He has made vote protection a central part of his current campaign message.
Obi contested the 2023 race as the Labour Party candidate but will contest the next presidential election as the NDC candidate.
