Peter Obi
Apapa faction vows, Obi won’t get LP ticket 2027. The Labour Party’s Lamidi Apapa faction has recommended the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, to seek another political platform to pursue its presidential ambitions ahead of the 2027 elections.
The Apapa group, whose legitimacy was just confirmed by the Edo Division of the Court of Appeal, announced that it had begun looking for another presidential candidate ahead of the 2027 election.
Abayomi Arabambi, the faction’s spokesman, confirmed this in an exclusive interview with The PUNCH on Wednesday.
Arambambi spoke against the backdrop of the appeal filed by Obi at the Supreme Court on Tuesday to challenge the verdict of the Presidential Election Petitions Court, which reaffirmed President Bola Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election.
The Apapa-led faction of the LP had distanced itself from the decision of Obi and the Julius Abure faction to challenge Tinubu’s victory in court.
Apapa was certified the genuine National Chairman of the Labour Party by the Edo division of the Court of Appeal on August 14.
Speaking to our correspondent on Wednesday, Arabambi said Obi should not waste his time pursuing an appeal against Tinubu’s victory at the Supreme Court.
According to him, Obi clearly lost the election due to his alleged mismanagement of human resources.
Arabambi said, “My advice is for him (Obi) to go and start preparing for 2027. But it has to be in another party, not in LP. We are not going to allow this kind of rascality to continue in 2027. We will look for a fresh candidate as far as we are concerned.
“Obi is free to go back to APGA to run, not Labour Party. We don’t want to continue accommodating a character who believes no other person, other than himself, has anything upstairs. He is not a good manager of human resources. That was why he lost woefully.
“Let me ask Obi who is accusing President Bola Tinubu of certificate fraud this question. Obi claimed he has a B.Sc. Did he present the B.Sc in his form? Was it not the school certificate he wrote there? Why is he hiding his own B.Sc? That is because he knew they could subpoena the vice chancellor or the registrar to come and confirm its authenticity.
But the spokesman for Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, dismissed Arabambi’s threat, saying “They (the Apapa faction) don’t own Labour Party. That is why I don’t want to argue with them. There is no need to pay attention to these folks.”
Also, the LP National Legal Adviser, Kehinde Edun, chided the Apapa faction, saying it is the Abure faction that the Independent National Electoral Commission recognised.
He said, “Do they have any authority over the party? They are suspended members of the party. So, how can they determine who becomes the flag bearer? These people have turned to comedians.
“The statutory authority to monitor and keep records of political party activities is INEC.” So, to whom are they going to deliver the candidate? It is the same INEC, and the electoral umpire can only accept nominations from the recognised National Executive Committee of the party. It is also the duty of the national chairman to nominate any candidate.
“As of today, the recognised leadership of the party is the one led by Abure and not Apapa or whatever they call themselves. We are not moved by anything they say. They are just comedians and mere impostors claiming to be what they are not. We know they will soon run out of steam. Nigerians no longer take them seriously because they are beginning to see through their games.”