Obi Doesn’t Believe In Labour, Party Was Vehicle For 2023 Elections – Doyin Okupe Insists

Former Director General of the Labour Party (LP) presidential campaign in the 2023 election, Mr Doyin Okupe, has hit back at the party insisting its presidential candidate, Mr Peter does not share the party’s ideology.

He noted that Obi is not a Labour person and that the party was just used as a special purpose vehicle for the election.

Obi defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a few weeks to the end of the window the electoral umpire allowed for political parties to conduct their primaries to LP in 2023 and was crowned the candidate of the party in Delta State soon afterwards.

He contested the election and came third according to the final results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), who conducts elections in the country.

Okupe subsequently announced his resignation from the party, describing it as SPV, to the consternation of party leadership and supporters.

A war of words ensued with LP leadership describing his exit as good riddance, calling him a “political harlot.”

Okupe restated his stance on Tuesday in what would further irk LP while speaking on Arise Television, insisting that, “The LP for us — for Peter Obi and I — and those in the leadership of the movement…the party was a special purpose vehicle (SPV).

“I have never been a labour person, I have never operated on the left before but we needed a platform and this was the only platform readily available to us,” Okupe doubled down on Tuesday.

According to him, “We thought that if we won the election…there are no fast and hard rules about ideologies. You can always find a shade between the left and the right. You can always move to the centre.

“We were hoping and praying that if we won we would find a way to come to some consensus with the labour.

“Peter Obi is not a labour person. He is not a leftist person, he is a trader, he is a businessman just like me. I am a liberal democrat, I believe in liberal democracy, I believe in free enterprise.

“I am not a social worker. As far as I’m concerned, my membership of labour expired the moment we lost that election,” Okupe re-emphasised.