The leadership of the Labour Party has confirmed that Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has no plans to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress ahead of the 2027 general elections.

The LP’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr Obiora Ifoh, stated this statement in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Friday in Abuja.

Ifoh, in the interview, dismissed the rumour that Otti intended to leave the Labour Party for the APC, calling it completely false.

“It is just a rumour, and we hope it remains so. We are in constant contact with our governor, Dr Alex Otti, and he has assured us that he is not going anywhere ahead of 2027.

“We believe he will stay with us, despite some of the issues we are working hard to resolve,” he said.

While acknowledging that political defections are not uncommon in a democratic system, Ifoh emphasised that Otti had no intention of joining the ruling APC.

“The courts have often interpreted Section 84 of the 1999 Constitution, and many defections have been challenged in court. So, if five governors are planning to defect, it won’t be anything new, as it has happened before,” he said.

Ifoh attributed the rumoured defection to the challenges faced by some opposition governors in managing their states.

“We are doing well in the Labour Party, and our governor is with us. We hope that by 2027, we will have more governors in our ranks,” he said.

NAN

A former governor of Akwa Ibom State, Victor Attah, has expressed the need for Nigeria to draft a new constitution that will be based on conditions unanimously agreed on by all regions of the country.


He said that the current 1999 Constitution was forced on Nigerians by the military, and insisted that things have been the way they are in the country because Nigerians are being forced to stay together without an agreement of terms to do that.

Attah, who governed Akwa Ibom from 1999 to 2007, was a guest on the Friday edition of Inside Sources with Laolu Akande, a socio-political programme aired on Channels Television.


“So, what we should look at is how do we get back to a state of conditions and terms that will be agreeable to all Nigerians, if we don’t do that, we are wasting time,” Attah said on the programme.

“Let me tell you a very quick story. About two weeks ago, there was a story about a young girl of 14 who poisoned the groom and the guests at her wedding because she was being forced to the union she does not subscribe to. What that suggests is nobody on this earth will agree to remain in a union if they have not subscribed to the rules and conditions of staying together.

“So, we must not continue to force Nigerians to stay together without first of all allowing them to spell out the terms and conditions under which they want to stay together.”

He said that Nigerian Constitution of 1963 accommodated true federal system, but that has been abandoned since for what he referred to as the authoritarian system in place now.

“For me, what is wrong is the constitution. We so not have a Nigerian constitution by Nigerians and the system must change,” he insisted.


There have been a lot of agitations in the country with some regions declaring that they want to secede from Nigerian. However, Attah believes those moves are triggered by frustration because nobody really wants to leave the country.

“My conviction is that nobody really wants to go but they are just tired and fed up with what is going on in Nigeria.”

He said that this discussion has been ongoing for a long time, but the government had turned a blind eye to it, forcing some people to say that they want to go because they are not allowed to be what they want to be in Nigeria.

The ex-Akwa Ibom governor said that if the country operated the constitution they are operating today in the 60s, Obafemi Awolowo may not have been able to declare free education in the then Western Region.

The Court of Appeal Abuja has reiterated that Julius Abure remains the National Chairman of the Labour Party.

A three-member panel of the appellate court in a judgement delivered by Justice Hamma Barka, held that its judgement of November 13, 2024, which recognises Abure as national chairman subsists and has not been set aside by any court.

Justice Barka made the declaration while delivering judgment in two separate appeals filed by Senator Esther Nenadi Usman and the caretaker committee and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The appellate court in the two separate appeals held that it did not delve into the issue of the leadership of the Labour Party, because such issues are not justiciable.

According to the appellate court, anything that is done outside jurisdiction amounts to a nullity. Hence the judgement of the Federal High Court delivered on October 8, 2024 by Justice Emeka Nwite is of no effect because it was delivered without jurisdiction.

While striking out the suit for want of jurisdiction, he held that the appellate court relied on its previous judgement of November 13 last year to hold that “Abure Remains National Chairman of the Labour Party”.



Details later.