Doyin Okupe, a leader of the Labour Party, announced yesterday that there would not be an alliance between the two-party contrary to what many people had anticipated.
“That discussion, or those discussions about a merger, alliance and all that were led by me from our side; it is dead – dead and buried,” he said during his appearance on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
“It is not Mr. Peter Obi; the Labour Party and its presidential candidate have long since withdrawn from that conversation and it was NNPP that continued to try to benefit from the traction of the popularity of Obi. Out of maturity, I decided that we will not take them on media-wise, so we kept quiet, but they kept going on.”
When President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term ends in May 2023, both Obi and Kwankwaso are running to be the next leader of the country.
There have been calls for both men to establish an alliance to increase their chances of winning the upcoming election amid worries that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may lose complete control over the situation.
Kwankwaso declared that he cannot be a running mate for Obi or any candidate of south-east origin, despite recently telling Channels Television that an alliance was “highly likely.”
According to him, an average northern voter will prefer to support a candidate from the region than cast his/her ballot for a south-eastern contender.
But it appears neither Obi nor Kwankwaso is willing to be a running mate to the other as Okupe insists talks about an alliance are long dead.
“The talk for an alliance had been dead for over four weeks,” he stressed. “I am the leader of the team that went to discuss with Kwankwaso’s team, and it was dead.
“The moment I asked them one single question: would they consider it appropriate and okay for a president of northern extraction and Muslim to finish eight years and another Muslim northerner from the next state to take over?
“And they said there is nothing wrong with that; as far as I’m concerned, the discussion was over and it has remained over since then.”
