“Half-Quotes and Half-Truths” – Presidential Aide Ogra Counters Obi’s Call for Resignation, Highlights Tinubu’s Progress
Otega Ogra, the Special Assistant to the President on Digital/New Media, has dismissed Peter Obi’s call for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s resignation, labeling the demand as one built on “half-quotes and half-truths.”
Peter Obi, a prominent opposition leader, was the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 general election.
Ogra fired back at Obi’s resignation demand via his official X (formerly Twitter) handle in a statement titled, “Here we go again with half-quotes and half-truths from @PeterObi.”
The presidential aide systematically debunked Obi’s claims while highlighting the verifiable achievements of President Tinubu’s administration. The statement reads below:
Peter Gregory Obi has once again demonstrated his most consistent talent: the selective editing of public records to manufacture grievances he can then ‘nobly’ respond to. Mr Obi wants President Tinubu to resign, and his evidence is a quote he had to edit to support his ‘half-truth’ argument.
Here is what Mr Obi told Nigerians the President said: that he promised improved electricity and challenged the electorate not to vote for him if he failed.
Here is what the President actually said:
“Whichever way, by all means necessary, you must have electricity, and you will not pay for estimated bills anymore. A promise made will be a promise kept. If I don’t keep the promise and come back for a second term, unless I give you adequate reasons why I couldn’t deliver.”
Read that again. “Unless I give you adequate reasons why I couldn’t deliver.” Mr Obi removed that clause, and he had to, because including it would have collapsed his entire argument. President @officialABAT submitted himself to the judgment of the electorate by saying, judge me on the full picture, and if I fall short, vote accordingly. That is a conditional statement. It places the accountability where it belongs, with the electorate, at the ballot box, in 2027. Mr Obi however took that statement and presented half of it as an unconditional admission of failure that should trigger a resignation. That is not criticism, but fabrication.
It is now clear that Mr Obi does not want Nigerians to vote. His poor advice is to skip the vote entirely and demand a resignation. One man is trusting the electorate. The other is trying to bypass them. This should not surprise anyone who has followed Mr Obi’s political career, because the ballot box has never really been his preferred route to power.
•In 2003, Peter Gregory Obi ran for governor of Anambra State, lost, and spent three years in court before the Court of Appeal handed him the seat.
•Seven months later, he was impeached. He returned to court, and the impeachment was overturned.
•In 2007, INEC conducted a fresh election. Andy Uba won. Mr Obi handed over, returned to court, and the Supreme Court nullified that election and reinstated him.
•In 2010, he won the Anambra governorship on election day, defeating Charles Soludo. This is the only election Peter Gregory Obi has won at the ballot box in over two decades of political life.
•In 2019, he was selected as Atiku Abubakar’s running mate. They lost. In 2022, he crossed to the Labour Party, where Patrick Utomi surrendered the presidential ticket for him. He lost again.
•He has since moved to ADC and, more recently, to NDC, where he has been selected again as a presidential candidate with Kwankwaso as his running mate. No primary contested.
So when he writes that the President should resign rather than face the electorate, it is not a mystery. Mr Obi does not know what it takes to get on a ticket and win without circumventing the process. What he wants, as always, is a shortcut, and this resignation call is his latest attempt to bypass the democratic process.
Funny enough, Mr Obi cites Keir Starmer as his model, comparing a Prime Minister answerable to the House of Commons in a UK parliamentary system with a President who holds a direct mandate from the Nigerian electorate in a presidential system. Mr Obi contested under this very system three years ago. He knows the difference. Did he forget how it works, or does the Constitution only apply when the results go his way? He does not care when the difference is inconvenient.
Now to the substance, since Mr Obi raised electricity.
Nobody in this administration has pretended that the electricity problem is solved. But Mr Obi’s tirade conveniently ignores everything being done to solve it.
1. The Electricity Act 2023 is the most significant reform of Nigeria’s power sector in two decades. For the first time, states can generate and distribute power independently. That single piece of legislation dismantled a centralised bottleneck that every previous administration, including the one Mr Obi supported, left untouched.
2. The metering ratio has moved from 44% to 57%, with 1.5 million meters deployed across DisCo networks in two years and $700 million secured to deploy 5 million smart meters in the pipeline. 110,000 distribution transformer meters have been installed under the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI) under @EnergyReformsNG
3. A ₦4 trillion bond programme is settling the legacy debts that crippled the sector long before this government took office: ₦3.48 trillion negotiated as full and final settlement, the first series of ₦501 billion fully subscribed, with most GenCos already signed at ₦2.3 trillion.
4. 45% of the market is now on cost-reflective tariffs receiving 20 hours of supply per day under Band A. The remaining 55% is being redesigned to target the vulnerable, not subsidise the wealthy. The tariff reform has already saved ₦1.2 trillion: ₦1.8 trillion actual spend versus ₦3 trillion projected without reform.
5. In March 2025, Nigeria recorded 6,003 MW in peak generation, the highest this country has ever produced.
6. And through the MDGIF, over ₦287 billion has been committed to 12 gas processing plants across 8 states, with a combined capacity of 381 MMSCFD, building the infrastructure backbone that will sustain generation for years to come.
None of the above is hidden. All of it is on the public record. If Peter Gregory Obi @PeterObi would take his time to follow the actual progress happening in his country rather than comparing parliamentary systems that do not apply here, he would know this. But following progress requires engaging with detail, and Mr Obi has never been interested in detail that does not fit a headline.
When you strip away the statesmanlike garnish from his statement, what Mr Obi published is a demand that the winner of a democratic election should hand over power without a vote, without impeachment, without any constitutional process, because Peter Obi issued a press release. That is not accountability. That is the fantasy of a man who believes his moral authority supersedes the ballot box.
The only thing that should not be manufactured is a quote. President Tinubu is focused on doing the work Mr Obi secretly wishes he had the capacity to do, and that is not going to change because of a tweet.
P.S: I do not expect rigour from someone like Peter Obi who is widely known for his penchant for contradicting himself on his own record, his own statements, and his own time in office. But cutting half a sentence to build a resignation demand is not even clever dishonesty. It is just lazy.
~ O’tega Ogra
P.S: I have taken the time to list out President Bola Tinubu’s promises on the energy and power sector, and where we are today. You can acquaint yourself with the progress here:
