The Director-General of the 2023 Obi/Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun, speaks on the crisis rocking the Labour Party, why the recent convention of the party held in Anambra State will not stand and options before the 2023 presidential candidate of the party, Peter Obi, among other issues. Excerpts:
The Labour Party is currently going through some turbulence, what do you make of the happenings in the party given the role you played during the 2023 presidential campaign and the fact that the convention that was reportedly held in Nnewi, Anambra State, offered Mr. Peter Obi, whom you worked for, the right of first refusal as the candidate of the party in the 2027 general election?
The fact that Mr. Peter Obi was not at the convention speaks louder than words. Of course, promising him the candidacy of the party in the 2027 general election is a Greek Gift and this is part of the problems in the party because they are not in the position to offer anybody any ticket for now. The process of electing the presidential candidate of the party is well laid out in the constitution of the party. You get the ticket from the primaries because the National Executive Council of the party does not equate primaries that would have several delegates who will vote.
So, this is the kind of people we are dealing with and this is the kind of problem we are seeing. Are we now going to assume that the man who says so, the chairman, doesn’t know how the presidential candidate of the party emerges?
When we were campaigning, I did not have any high opinion of the Labour Party. We found ground and in any case, we were strangers to the party. The way the chairman believes is very typical of Nigeria’s political parties, organisations and individuals.
This idea of desperation and not to leave the stage when the ovation is loudest, so that he may get some goodwill, has created another problem for the party. Probably, now we are going to have three factions, at least on paper. We will soon have an authentic convention that will produce the authentic officials of the party. When this happens, then we are going to have three factions. Although the other two factions are largely on paper, there is no substance to them.
“Promising him (Obi) the candidacy of the party in the 2027 general election is a Greek Gift and this is part of the problems in the party because they are not in the position to offer anybody any ticket for now”
Already, we have the Lamidi Apapa faction and now we are probably going to have the Julius Abure faction and we are going to have the substantive officials of the party. It doesn’t speak well of the party but I guess it has come to a stage where we need to purge ourselves of those whose thinking and orientation does not conform with our expectations. I expect that one of the options open for us is to purge the party of these kinds of people because during the election we were more or less tolerating them.
The kind of behaviour you see in them at the national and state chapters is not the kind of behaviour you expect from a party that has a genuine interest in winning elections. There are so many other things that will come out of the audit the presidential candidate has instituted. So, when the outcome of the investigation comes, I’m sure it will also clarify further the situation and explain why things are going this way.
The way they are behaving is another typical Nigerian political party but in their case, sometimes worse because most of these parties are shared parties because it is only politicians who are stranded that cannot bear the direction in which their party is going. I have proposed the idea of independent candidature which will respond to this kind of problem that we have. For instance, a man like Peter Obi is well known all over the country and many interest groups are open for him to become the president of the country. So, these are the people who would see to that eventually.
The Obidient Movement, more or less represents the younger generation in the party. I understand that the Nigeria Labour Congress was the organisation that established the party years ago and if somebody who gave birth to you is taking this position, it then questions the legitimacy of the convention. We assume that members of the NLC will boost the potential votes of the party. If they are withdrawing their support, then potentially they are taking away votes they would have cast for anybody interested in contesting on the platform of the Labour Party. So, if you consider all these things, we will not know where we are going from here.
Do you think that the Peter Obi faction will be the authentic faction when you acknowledge that you were a stranger in the party during the elections, and do you think that issues in the Labour Party will make Obi return to one of his former parties, the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Peoples Democratic Party or maybe form a party of his own?
I don’t like building people into larger-than-life phenomena but you know that without Peter Obi, there is no Labour Party in this electoral circle. If you take away Peter Obi, his followers and supporters from the Labour Party, essentially there is nothing like the Labour Party as far as I can see. If you look at the outcome of the elections, it says all you need to know about the party. The role of the Labour Party in the outcome of the elections is disappointing. So, we will just take one step at a time and see what goes.
2027 is far away and so it gives us a lot of time to decide what we want to make of the situation we find ourselves in. The Nigerian public is very perceptive and I’m sure that the position we have taken is supported by the Nigerian public. Nobody can hold any party or organisation to ransom. I was reading what someone wrote the other day that the Independent National Electoral Commission doesn’t need to be present at the convention of the party where the officials are elected.
That is news to me because a section of the Electoral Act was cited to support it but how can you say that the regulator of political parties in the country does not have to be at the convention? Its presence is indispensable and it has to be authentic to the outcome of the election. If someone goes to court after the convention, INEC will be the first respondent who would be called to state their position on what happened. I think from experience in the past few years, that the absence of INEC has ended the ambition of those that organised the kangaroo convention.
What is your thought on what happened in Senegal where a third force emerged as a winner of the presidential election?
It came to me as a pleasant surprise because the fear was that the immediate past president, Macky Sall, was not ready to leave the stage and that he was going to manipulate the constitution to grant him the right to seek another term. What was it that changed at the end? I assume that the power behind the throne pressured the president to allow what has happened and I suspect that the power behind the throne is France.
At the time the president was introducing crisis to his party, many people would have spoken to him but at the end of the day, I think the most impact, I don’t know, I’m speculating, but of all the people who have vested interest in the political stability of Senegal, France will rate as number one. And I think that they were the ones who pushed the president to let go.
But that doesn’t diminish the significance of what has taken place there that a 44-year-old person, who was not known to any politician, became the president. It shows, of course, that Senegal is moving towards what Nigeria was doing in 2022 and 2023 until it was aborted by powers that are above us like INEC and of course the judiciary.
Before the announcement of the 2023 presidential election result, Obi was trending as a kind of candidate that people from other parts of Africa wanted to emulate. I think they gave them names along that line and he stimulated that interest in the youth that we can do it. That of course, has a lot to do with what has taken place in Nigeria but again it was aborted, which has set Nigeria a long way back in terms of political development and political stability.
So, this is good for Senegal and Africa but the precedent of such was laid by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, when he personally even before all the results of the election were announced, called General Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress to congratulate him. That was a great act of statesmanship and I’m sure that may also feature in the minds of the immediate past President of Senegal to follow the pact of honesty and truthfulness.
I expect and I hope that other African countries are watching and they will follow the path that has been set by Peter Obi and now President Bassirau Faye in Senegal. In the case of Nigeria, it is a very big disappointment but we all know that the abortion took place at the level of INEC and judiciary, but that is by the way. Whatever you think of it, we have a de facto president as we speak and we can only wish him well and pray that he succeeds.
I have also mentioned the fact that legitimacy can be earned. No matter how you came to power, you can earn legitimacy by the kind of governance you instituted. But on the contrary, what we saw was a president being inaugurated and he practically knew nothing about the policies he was going to take on oil subsidies. The INEC pronounced him the President-elect sometime in March and between when he was pronounced and when he was sworn-in, there was enough time to single out something like oil subsidy and put in place measures to tackle the kind of crisis we are witnessing today.
“Obi doesn’t look to me like somebody who is going to be affected by old age any time soon. I’m sure his appeal will only increase from now till 2027”
By 2027, Mr. Peter Obi will be in his late 60s. Do you think that he will still be able to represent the youth demographic as a man in his late 60s, and who is the owner of the Labour Party?
He will be 67 years and relatively that is young, not so young. But relative to the average age of presidents we have in Africa; that is not old age. But when we get to that bridge we will cross it because 2027 is still far away and of course. Obi doesn’t look to me like somebody who is going to be affected by old age any time soon. I’m sure his appeal will only increase from now till 2027.
You spoke about the ownership of the Labour Party; the ownership of the party today is the members. We have strategic members and stakeholders like the Nigerian Labour Congress. I think a judgement was given in that respect that it was the NLC that established the Labour Party. That is of course, logical to him that using the name Labour Party is an implication of the affiliation with the Nigeria Labour Congress from which it emanated.
It is to the advantage of the All Progressives Congress and the People’s Democratic Party for the Labour Party to disappear but the party holds itself that obligation for that not to happen. As I said, we are going to make all efforts to get a party that aligns with the vision of Peter Obi and the Obidient Movement, which powered him to become a very significant political figure that he has become.
You can now draw your conclusions; first, the convention they said they had, the leader of the party was not there, nobody who constituted the trustees of the party was there and INEC was not there. So, how someone would consider that kind of convention a legitimate one beats my imagination.
How do you think that the crisis in the party will affect the chances of Peter Obi in 2027 if he decides to run given that the person of President Bola Tinubu thrives when the opposition is in disarray?
Unless you are playing God; I don’t know who will be the President of Nigeria in 2027. We just live one day at a time. None of us know when God will call us home. So, when people talk about 2027, I think it should be put in quotes. 2027 is a long way to go. The first prayer we should seek is the survival and stability of Nigeria so that we will have a country for whose leadership we want to contest.
The Labour Party is not the only party in existence and as I said there is also an opportunity because we are compelled to seek a political party or form our party. So we have options. Should the Labour Party and what they have just done in Nnewi stand, then of course, there will be no meeting point between those of us and such leadership.
