July 13, (THEWILL) — The National Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party (LP), Obiora Ifoh, at the weekend, dismissed the statement credited to the former chairman of the Labour Party in Ogun State, Com. Abayomi Arabambi, who said plans were underway to expel the presidential candidate of the party in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, for his involvement in the coalition of the African Democratic Congress(ADC).
A coalition involving the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, former Senate President, David Mark, and the former Interior Minister, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, ex-Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, and other political bigwigs in the country was established using ADC as a political platform to unseat President Tinubu in 2027.
Following the involvement of Obi in the coalition, Arabambi, a former LP Acting Publicity Secretary, who reports says was removed from the position in 2023, at a press conference held in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, said that plans were ongoing by the leadership of LP to remove its former presidential candidate as a member.
But in a swift reaction, LP’s National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, said that the national leadership of the party dissociates itself from Arabambi’s statement on Obi’s planned removal, as there was no such, insisting that the former LP chairman lacks the authority to issue such a statement.
Ifoh, who dismissed Arabambi’s statement as untrue and done out of his own free will, insisted that no plan by the party’s leadership to remove its presidential candidate as a member, saying that the party executive at the national level had not conceived such a thought of expulsion for him.
He opined that the party was only concerned about running an all-inclusive leadership to take over the reins of power from the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2027, and save the masses from the hardship meted on them by the ruling party, noting that any plans to eject Obi from the party would dabar its principle of inclusiveness.
“That statement is not from the Labour Party. We are not expelling anyone. We are running an inclusive leadership in the Labour Party”, Ifoh stated.
