The Labour Party presidential candidate for the 2023 presidential election, Peter Obi, has said he has never thought of leaving the party.
Obi, addressing stakeholders of the party during the National Executive Council, NEC, meeting in Abuja on Wednesday, reacted to speculations linking him with exit to other political parties such as the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
The Governor of Abia State, Alex Otti and Peter Obi had on Tuesday summoned an emergency NEC meeting following the sack of Julius Abure as the party’s National Chairman by the Supreme Court.
However, Obi said the LP was open to discussion with other political parties ahead of the 2027 general election but that such discussion must be done by stakeholders of the party and not himself.
“If there’s any party that would have been a party of choice today, if not for going through that process [crisis and court issues], it would have been Labour Party.
“But I assure you, it’ll be a party of tomorrow. Some have speculated all sorts of things, ‘oh, he has left Labor Party. Some of us are on our way out…’ Let me assure you, we are Labour Party members.
“I’ve never discussed with any other party. If we are going to discuss with anybody who discuss it jointly for my house as Labour Party.
“No party will tell you that they’ve seen me discussing with them. them. We’ll sit down and discuss everything, including leadership. Stakeholders will say, ‘we want to be part of this’, it is not Peter Obi’s choice. It is choice of everybody.
“We must move and do everything we are doing as a family, because we’ve chosen to be family, and this family does not exclude anybody. Let’s do the right thing. Let’s go and do the right thing from Ward to Local government, from State to Zone and do it nationally.
“Everybody is free to contest. Everybody is free.”
