2023; Labour Party reacts as 36 State Chairmen disclose Peter Obi cannot with election

2023; Labour Party reacts as 36 State Chairmen disclose Peter Obi cannot with election

The Labour Party (LP) national body has restated its disinterest in inducing voters with cash as a way of influencing their voting choice on the election day.

According to The Cable, the party leadership stated this following a threat issued on Thursday by chairpersons of the party across states to withdraw support for the party over alleged non-availability of mobilisation funds.

Speaking on this at a media briefing on Thursday, one of the chairpersons of the party in the country, Sani Abdulsalam, Gombe LP chair, said: “We have never been respected by the party leadership and also our presidential candidate has no respect for our party executives at state levels because Peter Obi deliberately mismanaged our goodwill with the imposition of his members and other support groups that decamped with him in May 2022 to our party,”

“Of note, Wednesday, February 22, 2023, was the meeting we had with the national chairman in the party head office where a discussion was held about the logistics support for state chapters and national officers towards effective mobilisation of our members for the presidential and national assembly elections on Saturday.

“To our surprise, the national chairman said the presidential candidate has no confidence in all the 36 state chapters’ leadership but would rather choose to work with their cronies and support group that came with him.

“The greatest shock from the national chairman was that money for agents will not be sent to any state chairman or national officers except those three NWC members including a woman, and that all state chairmen and 19 other members already picked by Mr Peter Obi himself will be given monies meant for party agents and an alert will be received by 10pm, Wednesday, February 22, 2023.

“As of now, no alert has been received by any state chairman and information reaching us confirmed that money was paid based on ethnic and religious consideration because only persons of a particular ethnic group currently run the campaign of Mr Peter Obi in cohort with the national chairman.”

Abdulsalam also said they do not believe Obi can win because he is “not ready and is grossly ill-prepared for the presidential race”.

Reacting to the development in a chat with TheCable, Yunusa Tanko, spokesperson of the LP presidential campaign council, said there is no issue of sidelining as alleged.

“Nobody is boycotting any election because the election is already on. And nobody is sidelining anybody,” he said.

“People are expecting conventional way of politics which is not feasible in our own place. And then the issue of probably mobilisation money for elections, which is what people are used to, and they’re not seeing it.

“Now, there’s no money anywhere on ground. It’s about your conscience and if you believe in a movement. That’s all. Nobody should expect any money from somewhere.

“That’s where the problem is but as far as we are concerned, nothing is stopping us. We are continuing our movement and voting will commence in the next 24 hours. There’s no problem.”