Labour Party scolds Apapa-led faction over ‘repeated attacks on Peter Obi’

Leaders, elders, and stakeholders of the Labour Party, LP, in the six geopolitical zones of the country, have berated the Publicity Secretary of the Lamidi Apapa-led faction of the party, Mr. Abayomi Arabambi, over his alleged “serial inflammatory blackmail” of the Presidential Candidate in the 2023 elections, Mr. Peter Obi.

The joint leadership of Labour Party Leaders Conference for National Consolidation, LPLCNC, Labour Party National Pressure Group, LPNPG, and the Labour Party Primary Elections Independent Observer Group, LPPEIOG, lambasted Arabambi, in a statement at Abuja, hours before the Supreme Court final judgment on the 2023 presidential elections.

National Secretary, LPLCNC, Comrade Tony Akeni; a national leader, Bishop Samuel Omede, and eight others, who signed the statement, said, “We condemn in the gravest terms the serial, mercantile blackmail fed inexorably to the Nigerian public in endless inflammatory defamation, and diatribes by Mr. Abayomi Arabambi against our Presidential candidate in the 2023 elections, His Excellency, Peter Obi.”

It read in part, “Several times during the factional incendiaries between the Julius Abure, and Lamidi Apapa groups, we warned Arabambi through his factional leader, Alhaji Lamidi Apapa, who we found out he has never himself issued or signed a negative public statement against H.E Peter Obi, and neither approved any.

“As the Apapa faction will recall, we wrote astringently to Alhaji Lamidi Apapa on September 7, and again on September 17, 2023, among many other communications, for their faction to prevail on Abayomi Arabambi to discontinue his vitriolic and unacceptable diatribes against the integrity and reputation of our party leader, H.E Peter Obi.

“In both correspondences cited above, which were copied to Comrade Anslem Eragbe, the Youth Leader of the Apapa faction for witness, we also observed to Alhaji Apapa that Arabambi’s ‘fight without integrity and probity of purpose is like the bar fight of a sailor – bloody, furious, and lacerating, yet without trophies, and a waste of bruises.’

“In those correspondences, we admonished that if the Apapa faction truly recognized Peter Obi as our Presidential flag bearer and leader, they should put a leash and padlock on Arabambi’s neck and mouth, compel him to ‘refrain from incendiary public statements against our principal,’ and to conduct himself with civilize restraint, as other leaders of their faction have done.

“Unfortunately, Arabambi has continued to prove that he is an irreparable political party destroyer without civilized self-control, and restraint – a tar that corrodes, infects, and destroys anything he cannot conquer for his immediate pocket gratifications.

“Finally, we wish to register one incontestable fact. Irrespective of the ill-fated outcome of the Supreme Court judgment of October 26 on the 2023 presidential election, H.E Peter Gregory Obi remains the undisputed leader of the Labour Party, and the global rallying totem of modern-day Nigeria emancipation struggle, otherwise christened the ObiDient Movement.

“As we warned in our previous communications, we will condone no one who lays claim to membership of the Labour Party yet breaks the hedge to make false denigrating, anti-party public statements, and least to mention unfounded, inflammatory statements against our global leader, HE Peter Obi.

“While the sound and profound in mind consider silence wisdom, unfortunately, silence also means consent to the simple-minded, misinformed, and innocently uninformed, who make up most society.

“In a country as populous as Nigeria, it is unrealistic to assume that everyone is sound-minded or adequately informed and able to decipher the truth in complex matters of public importance rightly.

“Therefore, to continue to be silent in the face of Arabambi’s unrelenting blackmail is to assume that susceptible public is scarce, and risk leaving a considerable population of Nigerians to continue to feed on the river of maggots that flow from his cesspool.”