Spokesman of All Progressives Congress, APC, presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, yesterday, mocked the presidential candidate of Labour Party, LP, Mr. Peter Obi, over his adoption by the Pan-Yoruba socio-political organization, Afenifere, for the 2023 elections.

It would be recalled that the leader of the Pan-Yoruba group, Pa Ayo Adebanjo, had on Monday declared the group’s support for Obi, saying he remained the only candidate that would restructure the country. Aside from this, he also said supporting Obi was in the interest of fairness and justice, especially as the South-East zone had yet to produce a president for Nigeria. Adebanjo had said at a briefing in Lagos on Monday: “The South-West, as I have pointed out, has produced a president and currently sits as VP; the South-South has spent a total of six years in the presidency, but the Igbo people of the South-East have never tasted presidency in Nigeria, and now that the power is due back in the south, equity demands that it be ceded to the Igbo. “We cannot continue to demand that the Igbo people remain in Nigeria, while we at the same time continue to brutally marginalize and exclude them from the power dynamics.”

But in a tweet, yesterday, Keyamo said the presidential candidates Afenifere backed in 2015 and 2019 failed at the polls.

“Propelled by a long-held animosity against Tinubu, in 2015, the Pa Ayo Adebanjo Afenifere endorsed Jonathan for President. In 2019, they endorsed Atiku. In both cases, they failed. Congrats, Peter Obi on this endorsement,” he tweeted. Meanwhile, the candidate of the Labour Party for Ankpa, Olamaboro, Omala federal constituency, Chief Peter Ameh, has called on politicians along major political parties not to underrate the presidential candidate of the party, Peter Obi, at the poll. Ameh said the political calculation of the Labour Party not having structure would not count in the 2023 election, as the electorate would serve as the structure for the party’s presidential candidate.

Ameh stated this at a media parley organized for National Assembly candidates by the Kogi State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, noting that contrary to the belief of politicians on the platform of other parties LP lacked the needed structures to win the presidential election, the LP rallies across the country had proven them wrong. “The turn out of the people who are the actual voters for the Labour Party rallies across major cities portends new dawn for Nigerians that are ready to take their destinies in their hands.”

Ada Peter