Dino Melaye recently claimed Peter Obi is a regional champion while Atiku Abubakar commands broader nationwide support. The 2023 presidential election figures tell a more complicated story.
Atiku leaned heavily on his home region. He drew 74% of his total votes from the North, his base, and just 25.1% (1,750,817 votes) from the entire South.
Obi’s numbers were more evenly spread than his critics suggest. While 65% of his votes came from the South, his own base, he still pulled 34.1% of his total (2,080,866 votes) from the three northern zones and FCT combined — a genuinely substantial number.
The comparison that stands out: Obi got more votes in the North than Atiku got in the South, both in raw numbers and as a share of each man’s total vote.
Excluding the FCT for a strict North-South reading: Obi took 1,799,149 votes across the North’s 19 states — about 48,000 more than Atiku managed across the South’s 17 states (1,750,817).
The FCT sharpens the contrast further. There, Obi won 61.2% (281,717 votes) against Atiku’s 16.1% (74,194).
Put together:
17 Southern States 19 Northern States FCT
Atiku 1,750,817 5,155,279 74,194
Obi 4,010,151 1,799,149 281,717
Obi’s support was never confined to the South. He picked up nearly 1.8 million votes across the North and another 281,717 in the FCT. Atiku’s total haul in the entire South was only marginally higher than that — 1.75 million.
It’s also worth remembering the structural gap between the two campaigns: Obi built this spread with no governors, no significant National Assembly bloc, and no state-level machinery behind him, while Atiku had roughly 12 PDP governors and over a hundred National Assembly members running a full campaign structure in his support. Whatever conclusions one draws about “regional champion” status should account for that imbalance in resources, not just the vote totals themselves.
Published by Chuks Nwachuku
