Labour Party Chieftain Kenneth Okonkwo has said that the All-Progressives’ Congress (APC) should stop referring to Peter Obi to fix the crisis in the Labour Party because the “worst of Labour Party is still better than the best of APC.”
Okonkwo said this in response to Kassim Afegbua, a representative of the APC, who had previously, on an interview with ARISE NEWS, said that Peter Obi’s inability to solve the conflict in Labour Party means that he would have been unable to rule over Nigeria, and would have made him a bad president.
Okonkwo, in an interview with ARISE NEWSDAY on Wednesday, said that the APC has been the “scourge and the worst thing that has happened to anybody in Africa”, saying that since the party came into power, several companies had left Nigeria, amidst other socio-economic and security troubles, and the APC, as the ruling party, has not been able to resolve the ongoing problems in Nigeria, but is always looking to discredit Peter Obi.
He said, “The worst of Labour Party is still better than the best of APC, and you can quote me on that. They cannot even organise National Convention, they cannot even bring out clean people to govern their party or govern Nigeria, what a tragedy.”
The Labour Party Chieftain said that Obi is not the Chairman of Labour Party to be able to resolve issues within the party in an instant but is just a member who still has to follow due process to get something done.
He also said that Peter Obi is not the President or a government official, and that the APC is always calling on him as a matter of their “incompetence and joblessness and nothing-to-doism.”
Okonkwo the addressed the recent NLC takeover of the Labour Party due to leadership and the recent national convention that was held, saying, “The idea that somebody will go to a backyard and purportedly say he has organised a national Convention without delegates from the ward, from the local government, from the states, to the national convention, is illegal, and that is irrespective of whatever the constitution of the party says because the constitution of Nigeria is supreme, and the act of the National Assembly is superior to the constitution of the parties.
“As I’m talking to you now, Abure and his members are no longer the executive of Labour party by the constitution. They have exceeded four years, and again, since they are not members of the executive of the principal organ of the party, they don’t have any right to organise any convention, they have ceased to be members.
“So, what you had was the members now organised stakeholders meeting, because there is a lacuna, there is a vacuum in the leadership of Labour Party, to chart the way forward, and they should because nature does not exist in a vacuum. So, having a stakeholders meeting- and of course NLC is a stakeholder in Labour Party, no doubt about that, there is nothing wrong with that. So, I think with time, they will fashion now the best legal way to go about it. But for now, the Abure executive has nothing to do with laying claim on the leadership of Labour Party.”
Speaking to the allegations against NLC President Joe Ajaero which claim he has a pact with the APC to destabilise the Labour Party, Okonkwo said, “That executive has been tainted with allegations of forgery, so I would not be surprised if they continue on that lane, forging things. The same Joe Ajaero that mobilised people to throw away the faction of Apapa in order to save Abure and save the integrity of Labour Party is the same Ajaero that they are now trying to label that he is doing what he is doing in order to have political ambition, that is very childish to say the least.
“That somebody is telling you to obey your own constitution, obey the constitution of Nigeria, obey the electoral act, and then suddenly the person now has an ambition. And may I ask respectfully, what is wrong in having ambition? Is it not the ambition of amber that is trying to destroy Labour Party? And now he’s talking about ambition. Who is really the person talking about ambition? Joe Ajaero is the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress and I know it as a fact that what they’re saying is blackmail.”
“They are saying all they are saying to cover up their incompetence and corruption in the handling of Labour Party affairs. Their regime is over,” he said.
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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