Unending crises: There’s mystic hand in PDP, LP – Obiechina, FCT LP CTC chairman

…Says FCT council poll is delayed to frustrate LP from winning

From Idu Jude, Abuja

As the date for the LP ward and local government congresses approaches, there are indications that the leadership of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) may have compromised to destabilize opposition parties ahead of the process and subsequently, the presidential election.

The Chairman, LP Caretaker Committee in the FCT, Chief Tobias Obiechina, in this Interview, revealed that the delay may result in contempt of court.

He said that LP would soon stage a two million-man protest march to the INEC office to demand reasons for the delay in the removal of Abure’s name from its portal after the Supreme Court judgement.

He said, that the implosion in PDP and other parties subsequently would be to the advantage of the LP when the elections come underway. Excerpts.

Leadership crises in the LP have  continued unabated, with wards and local government congresses fast approaching; what is your plan for the FCT LP?

The question is apt; even before the Supreme Court judgement that nullified Abure’s NWC, we knew that the Labour Party was not like other parties. The party was founded by the NLC, so it is more or less a social party. A party that is concerned with the well-being of the masses.

We are preparing well irrespective of what is going on, we don’t want to be taken unawares. And I must let you know that the victory the LP achieved during the elections of 2023 has not been forgotten. And I can still tell you that that structure remains because the people are still pained by the poor economy, poor human rights rules in Nigeria, and poor implementation of government policies. We are ready and prepared to surpass 2023 achievement. On a larger scale, the Obidient Movement is growing like wildfire both from home and abroad, mobilizing for the job ahead. And if you look at the FCT, that is coming back to your question, you would see that FCT was won by the Labour Party. The party’s votes surpassed constitutional requirements for winning the presidency in Nigeria, but due to the kind of politics being played here, we lost in the court. But we have learned from our mistakes. It won’t happen for a second time. So, we have been mobilising; the only challenge is the little delay of court processes, which was caused by the wrong judgment of the Appeal Court in favour of  Barrister Abure. But as I speak with you the Supreme Court judgment recently has said it all. But the delay is also to our advantage because the Abure faction has been mobilising and organising. We knew it must come to our advantage when the Supreme Court made a pronouncement, and that was just what happened. As I talk to you, most of those who were mobilised by the Abure faction are crossing to us because they know that they are going nowhere with this recent turn of events. The only thing we have not done is the fact that we have not started the sale of forms, which was because we are waiting for the INEC to respect the court judgment and delist Abure’s name from its portal. So, we are still waiting, and we are running our patients, and if the INEC fails to do the needful, then we will go to the office in protest and force them to do it. There we would ask the INEC Chairman to get a law dictionary and interpret the pronunciation. You see the delay in INEC portends danger, and there is no time.  So if we wait a little further and if they are not doing the needful, we will go for a two million-man march to press home our demand. But we are just being patient because our principal, Mr Peter Obi, is a peaceful man, and normally, we emulate his style, but things are getting out of hand. Despite this, we are preparing, and we are winning more than we did in 2023. We did that even when they said we hadn’t any structure.

There was a Presidential order to the FCT Minister to make the whole of FCT an APC state, and with the gale of defections, do you think LP still has a chance?

When a minister is mandated to deliver a state to a particular party, in a sane society, the minister should go into a serious campaign, not create fear in people as we witness today. I believe that most of the people defecting to the APC are doing it with fear and that was because they lack political ideology, which is why they are politicians and members of such parties. Take a look around the FCT; I can tell you that Wike only commissions projects around the city centres, not deep into the area councils. You can talk of other social amenities like quality drinking water to the locals. Affordable healthcare. As we speak, the Local Education Authority, LEA, has been on strike since the second term, and up till now, they are not resuming yet. So what we witness is just a window dressing project commissioning that does not transform putting food on the table of the common man. They forget that the highest number of votes comes from the common man, who will only be able to cast a vote when he eats and has strength. So, if the minister should deliver the FCT to the ruling APC, he should, first of all, think of how to give the common indigent people of FCT a feel of his administration with stomach infrastructure. This is because the common man does not prioritize owning cars or worries. He should win their hearts by providing for the common man. The Labour Party represents the common man and that they know. That is why we are still where we are. Except if they are trying to write results again, but by the time we mobilise our members and supporters, even if you give them money to rig elections they must resist it because you don’t give someone a gun to kill himself, and even if such is to be done, we will reject it because this time, we are ready to protect our votes with the last drop of our blood. You see unlike the 2023 election results, we will follow our votes. We are not asking for rigging. We know we will get the required votes because we represent the common man on the streets; we listen to them and comply with people’s requests. This means that the Labour Party is oriented.

Politics, they say, is grassroots-oriented. Can you tell us the relationship between Senator Ireti Kingibe and the FCT chapter of LP, and her capacity to justify your claims?

You see, the Labour Party, since her election, has been affected by internal leadership crises, which the Supreme Court has just settled. Senator Ireti, being a human being, was also affected by the process of which faction to deal with. She had waited for the outcome of the court process to fully identify with the authentic Labour Party. But I think in her little way, she is reaching out. If you look closely, recently, she has started identifying herself with the Senator Nenadi Usman-led National Caretaker Committee of the Labour Party. And now that the process has kicked off in ernest, I believe that she will do the needful for the party to capture the FCT come the next round of elections. The only thing here was that she was piping low watching the trend of events, but now she had declared her stand with the National Caretaker Committee (NCC). Now that she has made her position known, it is time we make our demands and tell her what to do as a Senator in FCT under our leadership. It is not as if she has not been doing, but there has not been sufficient publicity to propagate activities of her constituency projects because the avenue to do that has been riddled with crises.

There has been this crossfire from both factional groups, accusing each other of plans to transact with the LP structures against 2027. Do you see such in FCT?

Let me tell you something, be it Governor Alex Otti, Senator Nenadi Usman, or Peter Obi, who have sacrificed all for the Labour Party, none of them has the intention of doing so. If anyone can think of such, it should be the Abure-led outgone NWC that had such a plan to bury the LP. In the first instance, the tenure of that past executive was over, and supported not to allow the crises to crop up. Abure was supposed to let go and become a prominent, well-respected party leader, but he refused to go. So, to achieve the goal of merchandising with the party, he and the people with him who are power hungry, but never wanted to be elected through properly organized congresses and conventions stage-managed a convention without the party stakeholders across Nigeria.

Only God knows why they wanted to get it by affirmation, free of charge; it was just a case of people being power mongers, and Abure, from all indications, is being sponsored by the third force to destabilise the party and to make sure it comes to zero level. As you can see the same thing is happening to the PDP. The two prominent opposition parties in Nigeria are not safe. They are presently very weak. Maybe some people are benefiting from it, but the main objective is to ensure that the parties do not aim at the presidency come 2027. I can tell you that Julius Abure is the one behind all these problems in the Labour Party, and I don’t know of the PDP, but in my party, it is obvious that there is no other person than Abure and his cohorts. I can tell you that those people, alongside him, are only there to feather their nest, but Abure fighting because he knows what he is gaining. We know that Mr Peter Obi was funding them; if not, where was the Labour Party before now? What effort have they made before Mr.p Peter Obi came to the party? Anyone who is in the LP today knows that where Mr Obi stands is where the party stands, and for me, I am for Peter Obi. This is because I joined the party because of his kind of leadership.

We have it on good authority that those who wished to contest the FCT wards and LG congresses under the LP are withdrawing owing to the crises, is this true?

Let me say something about that: there is a mystic hand in these two parties, the PDP and the LP.  Something is being done to make sure they don’t exist. It is the handiwork of APC and again, people now feel indifferent about the Supreme Court judgment since the incidents that made a man who came distant fourth in Imo State election eventually became first by the Supreme Court judgment. The Supreme Court had given judgment in favour of a person who was sitting down at home to be declared a governor. Even Abure has gotten judgment from the Court of Appeal, and the INEC did not waste time to implement it. Now that it is the other way around, the INEC is wasting time. Don’t you know that the INEC is being monitored or being given orders from somewhere else? Has it been happening like this before, and do you know what it means? If it finally happened, the country would plunge into anarchy because nobody would be ready to obey the Supreme Court judgment again. But we know that they may be buying time to make people lose area council elections. But it is too expensive for the Supreme Court to make a political party lose local government congresses. If it happens,the whole process should be in shamble before the presidential election because they didn’t want LP to have structure to mobilise for elections in the FCT. And you know what this means? It means Nigeria as a whole is at risk, and it means we will need revolution to come back as a nation. It is either a revolution or an overhauling of the government. This is because I have never witnessed where a Supreme Court gave a judgment, and the people are playing a game with it. And that is what INEC is doing right now, and as I said, if they succeed in doing that, the Labour Party may not be able to condone this time because they are trying to create a state of anarchy in the country. I can tell you that the hand holding Abure and misdirecting the INEC, has misfired this time because they should have stopped the Supreme Court from delivering the judgment in the first instance, but since they have delivered the judgment, there is no going back and they should be mindful of the way they operate because they are rather causing anarchy and lawlessness in the country. The Labour Party is mobilising over two million marches to press it down on INEC to remove Abure’s name from its portal as the chairman of the LP.

As a presidential order to the FCT minister is to make FCT APC state, Tell Nigerians how you can face this herculean task?

Let me tell you that this plan will not collapse into our hands unless they fail to obey the order of the court, which is absolute contempt of the court because we are already mobilizing through the local government areas across the country. In Abuja, there is no area council where our people don’t hear about our moves. Even from the states, once I send out my message, it is done.  So, we are more than ready, the little problem we have is removing Abure’s name from the INEC portal. Like I said those who are vying for wards and local government chairmanship are ready. As you can see, the whole process begins within the last days of May and the month of June. They are just postponing the doomsday. They are only doing this to make sure that the LP does not win Abuja again. They want to introduce every available strategy. They want to cease the six area councils, and maybe they will release the information in the next elections with the plan to deny many the opportunities to contest.

What percentage, can you say the FCT will add to the vote of the LP in the next election?

I can confidently tell you that the FCT is capable of garnering two-third  majority. Remember that the other time, the party was denied the 25 per cent requirement, and now, they have seen that the party is even waxing stronger, so they are doing everything to hold it down.

Can you fault the context that the LP is a regional political party?

It is a wrong notion; the party is a national party, and that was why the achievement in the 2023 elections has one of the best records after that of MKO Abiola of 1993. If you can recall, those who even made things happen in 2023, were Northerners. This is because Peter Obi’s running mate then was a Northerner and a Muslim for that matter. The party is made for every Nigerian. In Abuja, the PDP was before the LP arrived, but with the presence of Mr Peter Obi, the population in LP swelled up, and the Igbo are many here because they are the people who travel a lot to dominate other regions. It doesn’t mean the party is being dominated by the Igbo, and like in the FCT, we have all the regions and ethnic groups represented in the FCT executive. So, seeing the Igbo in good numbers is just because they are mainly traders in good numbers.