The Labour Party (LP) has dismissed the 1, 234 names released to spearhead the Peter Obi and Yusuf Baba-Ahmed Presidential Campaign Council for the 2023 general election.
A former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Dr Doyin Okupe was named Director-General of the campaign council while a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Mohammed Zarewa was named as the council’s chairman.
Clement Ojukwu and Yunusa Tanko were named the secretary and Chief Spokesperson of the council respectively.
The campaign council also has different directorates headed by a director.
During the event, the chairman of the party, Julius Abure, was represented by the Secretary of the party, Umar Farouk.
However, the National Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party, Comrade Arambabi Abayomi, in a short message, said: “We are not involved in Dr Okupe’s mischievous political shenanigans. That is not the party’s programme. He can’t be talking about our party, our party all the time. Which party? Is he the leader of the Labour Party now to announce himself as the DG? It’s an anomaly. Who announced the DG of Atiku? Atiku did it. When Tinubu announced his DG, the party did it.”
“Where is Peter Obi? Okupe doesn’t know what he is doing. I want to be quoted. The DG ought to go to the North East or North Central.
“We are not a sectional political party. Our presidential candidate is Pan Nigerian. How can we have a presidential candidate from the South and the Campaign DG coming from the same South.”
Speaking during the unveiling on Wednesday in Abuja, Okupe boasted that the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had at least 15 million voters “in the bag” ahead of the presidential election next year.
Okupe noted that 80 percent of the new voters were supporting the candidate of the Labour party.
He noted that about 60 percent of Nigeria’s 38 million social media users are registered to vote, adding that 50 percent of the figure are “Obidient.”
He urged security agencies to stand tall against all nefarious political practices, and vile tendencies that may want to sabotage the peace and progressive march of the country.
Noting that the 2023 general elections were the biggest test for the Independent National Electoral Commission, he maintained that the commission had no choice, but to act as a fair, impartial, fearless and patriotic umpire.
“To INEC we say, this is your biggest test in recent history, and you have no choice, but to act as a fair, impartial, fearless and patriotic umpire, in the coming elections,” Okupe said.
Okupe added: “Notorious practice of compromising the system with corrupt inducement and money politics, and by the manipulation of the regulatory and security agencies, is no longer the norm, and will be hard to fly in these elections.
“Already, we have seen, earlier this year, in this very dispensation, how corrupt money politics and evil political conspiracies have destroyed unity, peace and cohesion, and stifled healthy democratic determination, in the internal structures of political parties, leading to heightened tensions and political disaffection.
“But we cannot allow these unhealthy practices to continue to truncate the destiny of our nation. As leaders who profess love for the country and the people we aspire to lead, we must resolve to put a stop to these practices, this time, and commit to playing fairly, by the rules.
“To the vast Nigerian majority who are wallowing in the unmerited poverty and sordid deprivations that decades of poor leadership has foisted on our country, the coming 2023 election offers you a great chance to use your vote to turn around the situation.”
