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The Lamidi Apapa-led faction of the Labour Party has claimed that Julius Abure and the party's presidential candidate, Peter Obi, were genuinely aware of how the party faired in the February 25 poll.
Abayomi Arabambi, spokesman of the Apapa-led faction of the party, disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen in Abeokuta on Saturday, September 16, 2023.
This position concurred with the opinion of the Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka, who recently accused the Labour Party leadership of deceiving Nigerians into believing that its candidate, Obi, won the hotly-contested poll.
"I can say categorically that Peter Obi's party came third, not even second, and the leadership knew it, but they want to do what we call in Yoruba 'gbajue,' that is the force of lies," the scholar argued.
For his part, Arabambi said that rather than taking Soyinka's comment on board and re-strategise ahead of the 2027 election, the Abure-led faction chose to pillory the elder statesman.
According to Arabambi, “it is condemnable and highly disturbing that rather than going back to the drawing board to meticulously examine where things have fallen apart and re-strategize for 2027 elections, some irredentist masquerading as members of the Labour Party have chosen to be attacking the highly revered scholar for only re-echoing the truth that is not hidden to discerning Nigerians.
The factional spokesman described the reaction of the Abure camp - issued by Obiorah Ifoh - to Soyinka's remarks as nothing but an “affront and abuse from a rude boy to his grandfather”.
Arabambi added that, “even Prof. Charles Soludo, the governor of Anambra State where Obi hailed from had also said in the past that the probability of Obi clinching third position in the presidential race was very slim not to talk of winning the elections.
“As a party, we knew that Professor Wole Soyinka was right in his submission because how does anyone claim to have won an election based solely on pejoratives, assumption, vague rhetorics and zero evidence pointing to such being the case, but on the expectation that the actual winner would be disqualified and by some stroke of black magic, the candidate in the 3rd place will suddenly be declared winner without any proof of having scored the majority vote is absolute judicial madness on display by Peter Obi, Julius Abure and their blind allies.
“We know we lost that election, it was true Obi and Abure wanted to do ‘gbajue’ because ab initio, even when the Presidential campaign council was formed, in the North, Peter Obi uses Igbo as State Coordinators while northerner remains their deputies.
“That’s why we failed woefully. Imagine somebody that has no polling unit result sheet, no agents in majority of the polling units now turn around to claim election victory. So, how then do we say we won.
“Labour Party has been reduced to a regional party under him as he is only interested in National officers of Igbo extraction.”