Okonkwo dumps LP, accuses Obi of not building party

• Party blames woes on APC’s manipulation

Former spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Labour Party (LP), Kenneth Okonkwo, has dumped the party, citing leadership failures and internal crisis as reasons for his departure.

He specifically accused the party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, of failing to build the party. He spoke just as the party accused APC of instigating the crises in opposition parties ahead 2027.  

In a scathing letter on X, yesterday, Okonkwo blamed Obi for the party’s woes and accused him of lacking the vision to build a strong party base. Okonkwo, a filmmaker and politician, expressed his disappointment with Obi’s leadership, stating that he failed to build a solid party base and instead focused on solving Nigeria’s problems without a strong party foundation. 

He also criticised Obi for not supporting Labour unions, which founded the party, and for not taking a clear stance on important issues. Additionally, Okonkwo slammed the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), saying they were taking Nigeria nowhere and had left the people with no option but to protest for their survival.  

Okonkwo stressed the need for a decisive leader, who could mobilise the people to achieve victory and secure their mandate. 

The movie maker pointed out that only a solid political party with a solid grassroots base could wrestle “power from these kakistocracy and kleptocrats.” He said he had hoped that Obi would seize the momentum and build a solid party of integrity that would have the solid base needed to overthrow these “kakistocracy and kleptocrats” by giving needed directives for everyone to fall in line, but he was shocked that Obi publicly declared that he didn’t promise Nigerians to build a strong Labour Party, but to solve Nigeria’s problems.

BUT Labour Party, in a statement, accused the APC of instigating crises in the opposition political parties, using it as an avenue to hijack the party or lure their members into the APC, including LP elected representatives.  
 
The party also accused the APC of buying up opposition parties in order to pave the way for President Bola Tinubu to be a consensus presidential candidate for all the opposition parties.
 
Director General of LP Directorate of Mobilisation and Integration, Marcel Ngogbehei, in the statement, yesterday, said available information indicated that “APC seems to have compromised one of the major opposition party in the North and another long time opposition party in the East.”

He added: “The case in hand is the NLC Transition Committee, which we suspect is an APC special purpose vehicle to hijack the Labour Party and there are countless others in various opposition parties.”  He said the parties that seemed to have been bought over by the Tinubu government were very strategic because they control one state each in their regions.