By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
Though an astute banker, Abia State Governor, Alex Oti has proven that he is also a deft politician, one who is intentional about his approach to politics and politicking. Aware that the Barrister Julius Abure faction of the Labour Party, LP which recently regained the recognition of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC will lay a devastating landmine on his 2027 re-election path, Otti who unsuccessfully made a bid for the Abia governorship seat in 2015 before becoming elected last year on the platform of the party has started in earnest to chart a political future outside the LP and the Obidient movement which had last year propelled him to power.
Riding on the crest of the Peter Obi/ Obidient movement effect which took Nigeria’s political landscape by storm and gave the LP unprecedented political mileage in the 2023 elections, Otti and the LP outpaced and outclassed the People’s Democratic Party, PDP and its candidate, Okey Ahaiwe to win the Abia gubernatorial election. However, no sooner had he emerged victorious than Otti, in a controversial TV interview, downplayed the impact the popularity of former Anambra State Governor and the Labour Party Presidential candidate in the election, Peter Obi and his Obidient movement had on his victory, though he would later claim he was quoted out of context.
Otti, as governor-elect had in March 2023 spoken about his victory thus: “In 2015 when I ran under APGA, there was no Peter Obi. And we have it on our record that I won that election. At the time we were joining the Labour Party, Peter Obi had not joined.
“It took about a week before he called me and said that he purchased the presidential nomination form and he was coming to the Labour Party.
“We were prepared to fight the way we fought in 2015. The votes we garnered in Abia we could have had but maybe the margin could have been smaller.”
As LP’s only governor, Otti played a critical role in trying to reposition the party when it was besieged by a leadership crisis a few months ago following INEC’s de-recognition of Abure and his National Working Committe, NWC on the grounds that their tenure had long elapsed. Otti rallied stakeholders, including Obi, and at the end of a meeting in Umuahia, the Abia State capital September 4, the Senator Esther Nenadi Usman led 29- member caretaker Committee that replaced the Abure-led faction pending a national convention was born.
However, Daily Sun gathered that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC which sources alleged, had sworn to weaken and destabilise any party structure that has the Peter Obi imprimatur ahead 2027 presidential election, saw in the LP crisis a veritable opportunity to execute its anti-Obi agenda. The dramatic Federal High Court’s validation Abure secured last month and INEC’s subsequent volte-face recognizing his LP faction at the expense of the Otti-driven caretaker Committee, multiple sources conversant with the APC’s highwire brinkmanship, told Daily Sun, are symptomatic of the ruling party’s one-party state aim.
Said a source: “Believe it or not, the Abure faction of the LP which was initially blacklisted by INEC is now back to reckoning on the strength of INEC and judiciary and this speaks to how LP has become an appendage of the APC. APC hirelings in the Abure-led LP NWC who have been heavily compromised are bent on getting even with Governor Otti, Obi and National and state Assembly members involved in the Umuahia meeting and setting up of the caretaker committee.
“Ahead 2027, Abure and his group are plotting devastating landmines against the category of LP members I have just mentioned. I have it on good authority that unless higher courts eventually sustain Abure’s ouster- which in any case looks pretty impossible because certain interests in the ruling APC have completely compromised otherwise impartial state institutions- everything will be done to deny or make it impossible for Otti, Obi and serving National and state Assembly members who participated in the Umuahia meeting to get LP tickets in 2027.
“Part of the grand design is to collapse the faction into the APC. The other options are either adopt President Tinubu as its presidential flag bearer for 2027 or field a weak Yoruba candidate that will offer feeble or no challenge at all to the president at the polls.”
Meanwhile, a loyalist of Governor Otti who pleaded anonymity “because I’m not supposed to speak to the press about this thing or reveal it” informed Daily Sun that the governor is in the know of Abure’s antics and the impending ambush against his re-election and has put mechanisms in motion to fend them off.
“Notwithstanding whatever political realignment or configuration His Excellency, Peter and the Obidient movement may be planning in the face of the mess Labour Party has become, I can reveal to you in confidence that His Excellency, Governor Otti is way ahead of Abure and his group in their plan to torpedo his second term; Governor Otti is set to chart a separate, independent political future.
“I can also tell you authoritatively that His Excellency is still a member of the Labour party only in name…he has his plans and will thwart Abure’s sinister moves against him. The outcome of the just concluded Abia local government election gives a clue as to what to expect in the run-up to 2027”, he told Daily Sun.
Despite being an LP state, no single local government or councillorship seat was won by the party in the Abia council election conducted on November 2nd, instead Zenith Labour Party, ZLP promoted by former LP National Chairman, Dan Nwanyanwu won 15 out of 17 Abia council areas while the Young Peoples party, YPP took the remaining two.
According to Governor Otti, he instructed his loyalists to contest the election under any party of their choice. His words:
“I remain in LP, if there is the need to leave, you will be properly informed.
“The crisis in LP made a lot of our supporters go elsewhere. Our people know those that would deliver the goods. As our people say, you know the child you would send out that would not disgrace you when they give him food. Even if he is hungry, he will refuse to eat.
“I believe that was what has happened in this case, right from the time I stood up to contest the election in 2015. When I left PDP to join APGA, our people followed me and I won that election then.
“APGA has not won even one councillorship seat before that time and then, we took almost half of the House of Assembly seats in 2015.
“So, sometimes, people recognise that political parties are empty platforms and that when you muddle up things in your political parties, you give advantage, create opportunities for your competitors and that was what happened in this last election.
“I authorised my followers to join any political party that they liked and the majority of them moved into other political parties. I remain in the Labour Party.
“Anytime I am going to leave, that is if there is any need to leave, you would be properly informed.”
Daily Sun has however learnt that the move was aimed at pulling the rug off the feet of the Abure-led LP faction which was allegedly warming up to either disrupt the polls through court action or by vetoing candidates presented by Governor Otti.
Daily Sun’s findings reveal that apart from the APC which some of his loyalists and political associates, including some serving APC governors and federal lawmakers are nudging him to move to for the purpose of his second term, Governor Otti has several options up his sleeves. These include strengthening the ZLP by getting a number fringe parties, including the YPP to fuse into it to make it a party to reckon with, getting the ZLP and other fringe parties to collapse into Njoku-led APGA after the only APGA governor-and-Anambra State Governor, Professor Chukwuma Soludo may have defected to the APC which insiders claim would happen soon owing to his losing the APGA national structure to Chief Njoku. Soludo had allegedly vowed to leave APGA rather than recognise Chief Njoku as the National National Chairman of the party.
Governor Otti, sources say, is also hopeful that higher courts- the Appellate and the apex courts- will eventually oust Abure and affirm the validity of the caretaker Committee in which case he, together with other stakeholders, will reposition the party and broaden its frontiers and rebrand it to welcome other parties willing to collapse their structures into it.
Daily Sun has however been told that a majority of Governor Otti’s loyalists, aides and several Igbo politicians across political parties are excited by the APGA option for according to them, it will help, after Governor Soludo may have exited, to keep APGA which has its main support base in the Southeast alive.
Though the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has been ruled out by Governor Otti himself, according to sources, there are some elements within his administration and the LP faction loyal to him, Daily Sun gathered, who believe that Abia needs to be at the epicentre of national politics, hence they want the governor to look towards the PDP if he can’t move to the APC.
“And talking about the APC, who told you that when push comes to shove, His Excellency will not make a move for it? We are talking about politics and politicians here, we are not talking about permanent enemies or permanent friends. His Excellency has friends across parties and don’t forget that political parties are mere vehicles to a destination- political offices. His Excellency has performed creditably well and has even been acknowledged so by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Reps, Hon. Benjamin Kalu even though out of the need to be seen to be politically correct, he had gleefully declared the governor as one-term governor a few months back.
“So, who told you the Deputy Speaker would not want a performing governor to join the party?
Who told you the leader of APC in Abia State and former Governor of the state, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu would not be happy to have Governor Otti in APC?
“ It is imperative for Abia and other non- APC Southeast states to join the party to fully be in the mainstream of national politics; and it will attract a lot of political mileage to our region”, Barrister Zeb Obiagwu, an APC stalwart in Imo state told Daily Sun.
Recall that both the Deputy Speaker and Senate President had at different fora appealed to Governor Otti to join the APC. The Deputy Speaker: “have told him in person and public that the APC will be the governor of Abia State…I don’t know how it will happen, but I know it will happen.”
