By Adadareporters
Lamidi Apapa’s faction of the Labour Party says Wednesday’s ruling of the presidential election petition tribunal, which ruled against the party’s presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, was justified.
Apapa said Peter Obi’s foray at the tribunal was ‘just a legal means to defraud LP of $15m dollars and N12b’.
The statement by Dr Arabambi Abayomi, national publicity secretary of the faction, was in a reaction to the tribunal’s verdict which struck out Obi’s petition.
The release read, “Labour Party, under the leadership of Alhaji Lamidi Apapa, warned against the stand of its presidential candidate that he was only chasing a wild goose.”
Abayomi, in the release, said it was a shame that the legal team of Mr Peter Obi failed to advise him properly before going to the tribunal, adding that the whole process was a waste of time.
According to him, “Imaging the candidate that failed to fund the party in order to engage the number of required polling agents! Also the filing of the witnesses outside the stipulated time has shown that the legal team is a failure.
“Some of us have been saying that Peter Obi decided to go to the tribunal to justify all the money he collected during the campaign. It’s unfortunate that Obi failed to convince the tribunal on those polling units where he was rigged out.
“The tribunal also said that he ‘made generic allegations of irregularities against the respondent without specifying the polling units.”
According to the faction, “Our previous position has now been confirmed that Peter Obi was just all out to defraud our party of donations made towards 2023 general elections which was in a scary sum of $15m dollars and N12 billion.
“Our party is also in tandem with the tribunal that the claim by the Labour Party concerning the blurred 18,088 results sheets is totally unfounded as the party ought to have agents at every polling unit who will have a copy of the result sheet.”
On Obi’s request that 25% FCT votes is a requirement before a president can be declared, Apapa’s faction said, “We noted that this is a shame on the part of Peter Obi’s legal team to be told in clear terms that Abuja is equal to every other state in Nigeria since, according to the tribunal, residents of Abuja don’t have special privileges.”
Apapa said Obi’s claims to have won the election were fictitious. Quoting him, “The prayers presented at the tribunal by Peter Obi and the restrained former national chairman, Julius Abure, should be framed for entertainment of future students of law.
“How does anyone claim to have won an election based solely on pejoratives, assumption, vague rhetorics and zero evidence, but on the expectation that the actual winner would be disqualified and by some stroke of black magic, the candidate in the third place will suddenly be declared winner without any proof of having scored the majority votes?
“As a law-abiding party, we accept the verdict.”
