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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The Director-General of Obi/Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun, has explained why Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, were unable to pay the party’s agents in the 2023 election.
In an interview with The PUNCH, Osuntokun said the party and its presidential candidate do not have the money to pay all the agents.
“We are not in a position to pay all our polling agents. That is the truth. We never had the money to do so. We had to narrow it down to where we can. We had a situation in which people that performed the role of agents and polling agents were not enumerated. It was just their initiative to do so in most parts of the country. It is a fact that we couldn’t pay many of the agents,” he said.
While debunking reports that some executive of the party mismanaged available funds, Osuntokun said the funds that were available was used to offset payment of some of the agents.
“Well, I don’t know where the information that the funds were available came from. Some funds were available but it was used to offset and didn’t go around the country. In any case, for anybody who is a party agent, should that be the concern if you truly love the party you are working for? Unfortunately, the Labour Party platform is a mixed flag. We have the likes of many of the people in the Labour Party who are there as machinery and things like that. They are not used to the idealism that the ‘Obidients’ represent,” the DG said.
Osuntokun, who exonerated Peter Obi from the crisis rocking the national leadership of the party, described factional executive of the party led by Lamidi Apapa and Ayo Arabambi as the typical example of Labour Party of the past.
He said there were people with different motives in the party, adding that they are the problem of Labour Party.
“In the short period that we had to put everything together, there was no room to separate the wheat from the chaff.
“These people are the problem. These are the worst of the types of Nigerian politics. They are lucky because somebody exhumed them from somewhere with the intent of giving them money; they are those, who are down and out of their luck. If you say that you love the party, you won’t be doing things like that. I don’t know whether to say that Peter Obi should have intervened; intervened to do what? They even went to the Supreme Court. They wanted to withdraw Obi’s case but they had been anticipated. So, the first responder was Obi himself, then the Labour Party. These are the people who are claiming to love the party. What do you want me to say about those people? These are thugs. And these are people who are down with their luck,” Osuntokun added.