Labour Party has said that unless opposition parties are united it may be difficult to dislodge the All Progressives Party (APC) in 2027 even as it also said its former Lagos State governorship candidate Rhodes Gbadebo Vivour, was so much in a haste to join the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
Vivour defected to the ADC on Saturday, but the LP in a statement yesterday by the interim National Publicity Secretary Prince Tony Akeni, advised him that politicians who genuinely mean to serve their people should learn to hurry slowly.
“By jumping the gun and hastily jumping boats, Vivour has shown, from our viewpoint, that he is still to learn some imperative essentials in his young political journey,” the party said.
The Party disclosed that there is a consensus by its leadership that a single opposition political party going into elections against President Bola Tinubu’s APC in 2027 may come short of victory.
“This is the Labour Party presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, Peter Obi, is working with, and we as Labour Party are one with him in it.
“Our party’s view is therefore that a rainbow coalition of multi-party colours carrying along Nigeria’s ballot population, driven by a common unifying electorate mobilisation, is what Nigerians need to sack APC and President Tinubu’s dictatorship out of power in 2027 and rescue our country from the APC’s apparent goal of one-party state capture,” the party stated. It noted that without defecting, Obi is meeting and engaging with all well-meaning opposition political parties.
“These include the ADC itself, PDP and also large unseen bodies of critical APC stakeholders across the various geopolitical zones of our country who are talking with the Labour Party.
“In our party’s well considered proposition, a time will come that a confluence of all the progressive opposition political forces will emerge to take certain critical decisions. These include who the coalition shall field on the 2027 presidential ticket,” the statement disclosed.
This, it added, includes “adopting the most viable and potential ballot winning governorship candidate in each state of the federation, irrespective of political party platform or flag.
“Thus, in the process, the practice and beauty of multiparty democracy, which the current APC tyranny under President Tinubu is determined to stamp out and destroy, will be restored.”
The party explained that this is what was delaying Obi not to defect “or out rightly enlist membership of ADC, PDP or any other political platform than the only one he can truly call his own, the Labour Party.”
It said Rhodes Vivour should have followed Obi’s footsteps of his master, and: “That is what Labour Party had expected him to do if he were reading the signs on the wall well.”
