On Thursday, February 23, 2022, Bashir Ahmad, the Deputy Director, Special Media Projects/New Media, of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), alleged that the chairmen of the Labour Party (LP) from the 36 states had claimed that Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the party, could not win on Saturday’s election because he had neglected them in the running of his campaign and mobilisation activities.
The tweet which had over 500,000 interactions as of Thursday, has been shared by multiple users.
Also on Thursday, a media house reported a similar claim, suggesting that the Obi had neglected the party’s state chairmen.
Verification
To verify the claim’s authenticity, we called the LP’s national chairman, Barrister Julius Abure, to confirm the following; if the statement by Ahmad was true, if there were internal indignation towards their presidential candidate, or if the Chairmen of the 36 states had any bias towards the party’s presidential candidate.
Abure decried the continuous misinformation concerning the party and its candidate, further debunking the claim.
According to the National Chairman, “it is not possible. That is not true. All our party chairmen are working towards the election tomorrow”.
Although, Abure did not outrightly debunk any bias of the state chairmen on Obi, Sani Abdulsalam, the Gombe state LP chairman and co-ordinating chairman for the 36 states, at a press conference in Abuja, did speak negatively on Obi.
Accompanied by Mohammed Alkali, the national vice chairman of the party, Abdulsalam said “as members of the Labour Party National Executive and National Working Committee (NWC), it is our considered opinion and informed conclusion that Peter Obi cannot win this election since all party executives have been sidelined.
“He is not ready and is grossly ill-prepared for the Presidential race,” he added.
Verdict
There was indeed a press conference led by the Labour Party state chairman for Gombe, where heavy allegations were levelled against the party’s presidential candidate. But the party’s chairman told CDD War Room that the party’s state chairmen are working for Obi.