Seriake Dickson, national leader of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), says the opposition party is doing its candidates a favour by allowing them to contest elective positions on its platform in the 2027 elections.

Speaking on Arise Television’s Prime Time programme on Wednesday, Dickson dismissed suggestions that the NDC should be grateful to Peter Obi, its presidential candidate for the 2027 elections, or any other political figure for joining the party.

“Don’t make it look like anyone is doing NDC a favour. No one is,” Dickson said.

“Rather, the NDC and I and my colleagues are doing people a favour by granting our platform.”

The former Bayelsa governor urged Obi’s supporters to stop attacking the party or its leaders, noting that such actions undermine the political vehicle carrying their preferred candidate.

“If you are genuinely supporting Peter Obi and you are disparaging me, the leader, or the platform itself. That is nonsensical,” he said.

According to the party leader, NDC has demonstrated confidence in Obi by adopting him as its sole presidential candidate and selecting a vice-presidential candidate without internal disputes.

“Nobody paid shishi. So, if a presidential candidate didn’t pay shishi to be made the sole presidential candidate and sole vice-presidential candidate, that same party cannot be the one saying that small people are underprivileged,” he said.

The senator also pushed back against suggestions that he lacked the political stature to seek the presidency himself.

“I could have run. There’s no one more qualified than me. There’s no one more qualified than me to run for presidential candidate. None,” he added.

Dickson said the NDC had attracted politicians and supporters from across the country even before Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the former governor of Kano, joined the party, adding that the platform’s growth is not dependent on any single individual.

According to him, there is no crisis within the NDC, contrary to reports suggesting tensions between party leaders and supporters of the presidential ticket.

“Peter Obi is a cherished member of our party,” he said.

“On our own, we have made him a presidential candidate. Sole presidential candidate. And that counts for something. We are working well together. There’s no crisis.”

He added that while supporters may not feel obliged to express gratitude to those who built the party, they should recognise that attacking the platform would ultimately hurt the candidates they support.

Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele, has disclosed plans to sponsor a bill seeking to introduce a single six-year tenure for presidents and governors, a move he said would allow elected leaders to focus more on governance and less on re-election politics.

Bamidele revealed the proposal during an interview with journalists in his office on Tuesday, saying the legislation would be among the first bills he intends to introduce in the next Senate after the 2027 general elections.

Nigeria currently operates a two-term system under which presidents and governors can serve a maximum of two four-year terms.

However, the Senate leader argued that the arrangement often compels elected officials to begin strategising for a second term barely midway into their first tenure, thereby diverting attention from governance.

“One of the first set of bills that I look forward to moving, by God’s grace, when we come back for the 11th Senate, God willing, is for a bill that will only make it possible for anyone who wants to be president of this country, or governor in any part of this country, to spend only one term of six years,” he said.

According to him, a single six-year tenure would remove the pressure and distractions associated with seeking re-election.

“So that you don’t even have to worry about wasting almost one and a half years of your first term thinking and struggling and looking forward to how you’ll be re-elected.

“If you know you are there for six years, only one tenure, you put in your best from day one. You know this is the only chance that you have,” Bamidele said.

The lawmaker acknowledged that the proposal may generate debate and may not attract unanimous support, but insisted that lawmakers must continue to pursue reforms aimed at improving governance.

“That’s my opinion. It doesn’t mean everybody will agree with me. But it also does not mean that I am prevented from doing that because that has not been the law,” he said.

Bamidele further noted that laws are not static and should evolve to meet changing national realities.

“The essence of law, the essence of parliament, is that laws are like human beings; they grow,” he added.

The proposal is expected to reignite a long-running constitutional debate over the tenure of elected executives in Nigeria.

Similar suggestions for a single tenure have surfaced at different times since the return to democratic rule in 1999, with supporters arguing that it would curb the distractions of re-election campaigns and encourage long-term policy implementation.

In recent constitutional review proposals sent to the National Assembly, former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar, advocated for a six-year single term for president and governors, with the presidency constitutionally rotated among the country’s six geopolitical zones.

He stated that he would make the constitutional amendment his top priority if elected.

Critics, however, have contended that a second-term option allows voters to reward performance or reject underperforming leaders at the polls.

If formally introduced and passed by the National Assembly, the bill would require far-reaching amendments to the 1999 Constitution and approval by at least two-thirds of the state Houses of Assembly before it can become law.

Julius Abure, factional national chairman of the Labour Party (LP), has advised Seriake Dickson, national leader of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), to be cautious in his alliance with Peter Obi and his supporters.

Obi is the presidential candidate of the NDC. He secured the party’s ticket on May 30 after he was ratified at its national convention held in Abuja.

In a statement he personally signed on Monday, Abure said Dickson appeared to have learnt from the recent crisis in the LP, describing the NDC leader’s alleged refusal to concede all elective positions in the party to Obi’s supporters as commendable.

Abure alleged that Obi and Alex Otti, governor of Abia, and many of their supporters who won elections on the platform of the LP in 2023 have since turned against the party’s leadership.

“They say, history usually repeats itself. Senator Dickson and Co have seen their trajectory and learnt from what happened to us, that a lot of them after they have won and now in government, turned round and were struggling with the leadership of the party,” the statement reads.

“I want to say that Obi and his followers are ingrates who will never remember the sacrifices you made for them. It is even dangerous for the leadership of the NDC to wholly hand over the elective positions to Obi and his followers.

“We did it in 2022/23, immediately they saw that Obi was interested in the leadership of the party, all those elected under the platform of the party simply followed Obi, forgetting all the sacrifices and suffering we made for them.”

Abure claimed that the crisis in the LP worsened when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) obeyed a court ruling which said the tenure of the party’s leadership had lapsed, giving rise to the Nenadi Usman-led interim national committee.

“They fell into the trap of INEC, when the commission deceived them to say that the tenure of the executive has expired. We had expected them to reject that position,” Abure said.

He noted in the light of what transpired in the LP, “it is strategically” important for Dickson to retain some control within the NDC by ensuring that his own supporters occupied positions in the party.

“He needed to bring his own people so that when the chips are down, he will also have people that will speak and defend him,” Abure said.

Abure further claimed that Obi’s supporters joined the NDC to dominate the party’s structure as they allegedly did in the LP.

“They trooped into NDC with Obi, hoping to occupy every space like they did in the Labour Party. No leader of any political party, seeing what Obi did to the Labour Party, along with his followers, will make that mistake again,” he said.

He noted that his comments were prompted by questions about how the LP managed Obi and his supporters during the 2022/2023 election cycle.

According to him, the party made significant sacrifices to accommodate Obi’s interests, including granting many tickets to his supporters free of charge.

“We ensured that Obi’s interests were adequately taken care of. We only looked at his body language, and we obliged most of his supporters’ tickets,” he said.

“Most of the tickets were for free, believing that we were investing in those persons in line with the philosophy of the party, expecting that when they win, they will bring along the necessary support that will help in the growth of the party.

“But ironically, when they came into power, they went after the leadership of the party.”

Abure also accused Obi and Otti of attempting to take over the party’s leadership following disputes over the tenure of its executives.

“The leaders, particularly, Peter Obi and Alex Otti decided to take over the leadership of the party,” he said.

He added that elected officials who emerged on the party’s platform failed to support it financially, urging the NDC to learn from the LP’s experience.

BACKGROUND

Usman, a former minister of finance, was appointed as the LP’s national caretaker committee chairperson on September 4, 2024.

INEC officially recognised Usman’s leadership in January 2026, following a federal high court ruling that affirmed the caretaker committee.

On April 21, the court of appeal in Abuja upheld the ruling of the federal high court and dismissed Abure’s appeal seeking to overturn his removal as the party’s national chairman.