Peter Agada, presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party, has said he and his team authored the “consumption-to-production” idea that Peter Obi used in the 2023 campaign.

Agada, a former figure in Obi-aligned support structures, told interviewers that Obi knew the slogan at a high level while the engineering — how it would work on the ground — came from policy people around him, including work linked to Pat Utomi and others. He has also said that if Obi debated him on the details, the former Anambra governor would struggle.

The phrase itself is not a secret patent. Obi posted a breakdown of “consumption to production” in late 2022 and repeated it through the Labour Party run and into his later 2027 messaging. Campaigns routinely absorb language from aides, coalitions and older development talk. Who first typed a sentence is rarely as clear as who made the sentence famous.

Agada is now selling his own 2027 bid and a digital-government pitch he calls LabourDirect.

Claiming the Obi slogan does two things at once: it borrows the crowd that already knows the words, and it tries to recast Obi as the face of work other people drafted.

Obi has not publicly accepted or rejected the authorship claim in the latest interviews. Until there is a paper trail both sides sign, it remains one candidate’s account of a slogan millions already treat as Obi’s. The voters’ question is older than the credit fight: whether anyone on the 2027 ballot can move Nigeria from buying to making, whatever name they print on the pamphlet.