Abati: I thought I could rattle Tinubu during media chat — but he knows what he’s doing

By James Ogunnaike, Abeokuta

The Lamidi Apapa-led faction of Labour Party (LP), on Saturday, owned up that the party truly lost the February 25 Presidential election, saying that the party’s Presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi and Mr. Julius Abure knew the truth about the performance of the party at the poll.

This position was contained in a statement made available to newsmen in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital, by Abayomi Arabambi, spokesperson of the Apapa-led faction of the party, in support of the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka’s comment in South Africa, on Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election.

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.

He revealed that the party sees the reaction of its factional Chairman, Julius Abure through his personal media aide, Mr Obiorah Ifoh to Soyinka’s statement as nothing but “affront and abuse from a rude boy to his grandfather”.

Arabambi said, “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.”

He among other things alluded to the failure of the party to refuse to plan saying that it was an open secret that the party in its preparation towards 2023 elections had poor logistics and suffered dearly for it.. (Vanguard)