Peter Obi told a national television audience Monday that no other candidate in the 2027 presidential race can offer northern Nigeria what he intends to deliver — a declaration that opened his most direct pitch yet to the region that has historically determined who wins the presidency.

Speaking on Arise TV, the Labour Party flag-bearer and former Anambra governor framed the North not as a political problem to be managed but as an economic opportunity waiting for a government with the will to unlock it. He argued that Nigeria’s greatest untapped asset sits in the region’s agricultural potential, and that a committed administration could generate more revenue from farming than the country currently extracts from oil.

“Nobody can do what I intend to do in the North. We will change the North. Our greatest asset as a country is in the North. We can make more money from agriculture than we make from oil,” Obi said.

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The pitch was pointed and deliberate. Obi has faced persistent questions about his ability to build a northern coalition strong enough to compete in a general election, given that his 2023 showing — while impressive for a third-party candidate — did not produce the cross-regional breadth that a winning coalition requires. Monday’s appearance was an attempt to address that question directly, on his own terms.

He pushed back against the prevailing assumption that northern support must be brokered through established political heavyweights. Asked whether he would need the backing of figures such as Nasir El-Rufai and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso to make genuine inroads in the region, Obi said he welcomed collaboration but rejected the transactional model of Nigerian politics in which a few prominent individuals deliver blocs of voters.

“I will work with them so they can support the process, but Nigeria is bigger than individuals,” he said.

Read more: 2027: Nobody Can Match My Plans For The North – Peter Obi

His argument was that ordinary northerners do not need a political godfather to tell them who serves their interests — they need a candidate whose programme speaks directly to poverty, insecurity and the chronic underinvestment in education and healthcare that have kept the region from realising its potential. “If we want to secure the North, we must invest in agriculture, reduce poverty, and improve education and healthcare,” he said.

Security came up repeatedly as the foundation on which everything else depends. Obi said no meaningful development was possible until the insurgency, banditry and farmer-herder violence tearing through northern communities were brought under control. He has previously pledged to declare war on terrorists if elected. On Monday he restated the logic: “You cannot achieve development without first ensuring security.”

He extended his critique beyond the North to the broader failure of Nigerian leadership across administrations, arguing that the country’s deepest problem was not a shortage of resources but a shortage of leaders willing to govern across ethnic and religious lines. “We need leaders who will unite us as a country. Religion and tribe should not define our future,” he said.

Obi also used the appearance to make an institutional argument that cut against the current political climate. He called on the government to stop treating the opposition as a threat and to actively strengthen it, saying that a functional opposition was not a political inconvenience but a structural requirement for accountability. “The government should protect the opposition. In fact, they should make opposition stronger and make it work,” he said.

With 2027 still more than a year away, the field of declared and likely presidential contenders is still assembling. Obi’s early and aggressive northern outreach suggests his campaign has concluded that the path to Aso Rock runs through a region that has never elected an Igbo president — and that the way to change that calculation is not to wait for endorsements but to make an argument that no other candidate is currently making.