The Presidency has described the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, as the Nigerian version of former US President and Republican candidate for the US 2024 election, Donald Trump.

The Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to President Bola Tinubu, Temitope Ajayi, drew the comparison in a post on social media platform, X on Wednesday.

“Peter Obi is the Nigeria version of Donald Trump. Like Obi, Trump will use the most negative epithets imaginable to describe a country he wants to lead again just to make a point and rile up his base,” he wrote.

This comes following the US presidential debate between Trump and Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris put Donald Trump on the defensive in a fiery televised debate Tuesday, getting under her rival’s skin as they battled for a breakthrough in an agonizingly close US presidential election.

The 2024 US elections are slated to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.

Ajayi added, “Kamala Harris prosecuted Trump very well in their first face to face debate yesterday night. Kamala convincingly won the debate and left no one in doubt about his capacity.

“Vice President Harris knew Trump’s weakness and set traps for him. Trump fell for her baits. Both candidates have been fact-checked on their claims in the debate. While Harris was reported to have made just one incorrect claim, Trump made 33 false claims in the same 90 minutes debate.”

While the duo debated, Trump often responded to Harris’s provocations by repeating conspiracy theories and making false statements regarding the 2020 election and immigration.

Despite being fact-checked by debate moderators, the former president stood by his controversial claims, including the assertion that immigrants were consuming the pets of U.S. residents.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs — the people that came in — they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country,” Trump said, contradicting the Springfield city manager, who said such accusations had no basis in fact.

In a performance that earned her the endorsement of pop superstar Taylor Swift, the Democrat baited the “extreme” Republican into angry responses on issues ranging from abortion to democracy and foreign policy.

The 59-year-old US vice president managed to knock Trump off his game in their first and only scheduled showdown, which featured a series of bitter personal attacks on both sides.

Trump said afterwards that the ABC News-hosted clash in Philadelphia was his “best debate” but snap polls and commentators said Harris had won, with her campaign quickly challenging him to a second debate in October.

With less than two months until election day, Harris was under pressure to deliver in front of an audience of tens of millions after her sudden rise to the top of the Democratic ticket in place of US President Joe Biden.

She started on the front foot by surprising Trump by approaching him to shake his hand before they took to their lecterns — and then kept the upper hand.

Trump repeatedly raised his voice as he hit back at the vice president on immigration and the economy, branding her a “Marxist” and blaming her for what he said were the failings of President Joe Biden’s administration.

Harris responded by looking on in amusement before declaring that she represents a fresh start after the “mess” of the Trump presidency — and saying: “We’re not going back.”

‘Bunch of lies’
One of their most intense exchanges was on abortion.

Trump insisted that while having pushed for the end of the federal right to abortion, he wanted individual states to make their own policy.

Harris said he was telling a “bunch of lies” and called his policies “insulting to the women of America.”

Another jarring clash came as Trump doubled down on his unprecedented refusal to accept losing to Biden in the 2020 election, before trying to overturn the result.

Harris responded by mocking his catchphrase as a reality TV star, saying that Trump had been “fired by 81 million people” and calling him a threat to democracy.

The former prosecutor pointed out that Trump is a convicted felon, called him “extreme” and said it is “a tragedy” that throughout his career he had used “race to divide the American people.”

The rivals also clashed on foreign policy, with Harris telling Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch” when it came to the war in Ukraine and that world leaders were “laughing” at him.

Trump shot back by accusing Harris of being weak on the war in Gaza, saying she “hated Israel”.

But Harris, who spent five days intensively preparing for the debate, repeatedly managed to needle Trump into finger-jabbing insults and meandering invective.

She elicited an angry response when mocked the size of his trademark rallies, one of his favorite topics, saying that attendees were leaving early out of “exhaustion and boredom.”

…Says NNPC Most Corrupt Organisation In The World

Afenifere Chief Economist, Segun Sanni, has expressed the need for the Nigerian government to cut costs, as he said that the country has indeed become insolvent.

Sanni, who was a guest on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Wednesday, frowned at the “lavish” spending by the President Bola Tinubu-led Federal Government.

“The people of Nigeria would understand better if the government can come clean with us. Nigeria is indeed very broke. We need to cut costs,” Sanni said.


Pointing out the jumbo salaries of government officials among others, the economist stated that government’s extravagant expenditures are not reflective of the economic challenges in the country.

“We are spending lavishly, a government that is spending lavishly and living large cannot tell Nigerians that Nigeria is broke. We are indeed broke but our government is not using our resources on itself as if we are indeed broke.

“Spending 90 billion on hajj, 21 billion on a new vice president’s lodge, 40.6 billion in this year’s budget to renovate Aso Rock and the rest of it we hear. We hear all these scandalous figures being mentioned but how much of it is being spent on the people,” he queried.

Sanni also condemned the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for spending the country’s funds without proper accountability, adding that the audit released in 2023 cannot be trusted. I

“We have an NNPC, the most corrupt, opaque and inefficient organisation in the world. NNPC is more or less a sales man, we have an arrangement in place where NNPC collects our money after selling the oil and spends out of it the way it likes without any monitoring, oversight or supervision. Those expenses of NNPC that nobody has monitored are what Nigerians are being called on to bear, Sanni added.

Preferring solution to Nigeria’s economic problem, he called for a more judicious spending of the government’s resources where every government funds are properly accounted for.

“The government of the country should be in an austerity mode whereby every dollar or naira we make is judiciously spent. There has to be a more judicious spending of our money across all levels of government”, he said

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has dismissed an appeal filed by Kenneth Imansuangbon seeking to disqualify Olumide Akpata as the governorship candidate of the Labour Party in the September 21 governorship election in Edo State.

In the lead judgment delivered by Justice Okon Abang, the appellate court held among others that Imansuangbon failed to explore the intra-conflict resolution mechanism of the labour party before rushing to court.

The court also held that his case was premature in law and could not be entertained on the ground that conditions precedent were not met.

The unanimous judgment of the three-man panel of justices also held that Imansuangbon failed to tender the disputed results of the February 23 primary election of the party, which he claimed to have won.

It would be recalled that in June, Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court Abuja dismissed a suit seeking to void the nomination of Akpata as the LP candidate in the September 21 election.

In the judgement, Justice Omotosho upheld the arguments by Akpata’s lawyer, Johnson Usman, (SAN) that the plaintiffs were without the legal right to institute the suit.