Akin Osuntokun, who led Peter Obi’s 2023 campaign, has said that the huge support for the candidate was driven by young people, not by the Labour Party. He explained that before the election, he tested his theory by informally polling young people wherever he went, and their response was always the same.
According to a video from ARISE NEWS, he would ask the children of his friends, as well as stewards and other workers, who they planned to vote for. He said that without a single exception, they all said they were going to vote for Obi. This confirmed his belief that the energy behind the campaign was a “youth rebellion” that the political establishment did not see coming.
Osuntokun said, “The focus was the youth. Before the presidential election, I was doing some kind of sampling, testing. My hypothesis at that time was that almost all the young people in Lagos and probably all over the country are going to support this guy. We all know the youth rebellion. So anywhere I go, I test that hypothesis. Whenever I go to a friend’s house, maybe for dinner or whatever it is, I will ask the children and the steward, who are you going to vote for? Now without one exception, they said that they are going to vote for Obi. So that was confirmed in the election.
