LP faction backs Tinubu’s swearing in, accuses Obi of making illegal request

The Labour Party faction led by Lamidi Apapa has distanced itself from agitation that the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, should not be sworn in pending the resolution of the petitions before the presidential election tribunal.

There was uproar when Archbishop John Onaiyekan, an elder statesman, said the judiciary ought to have given its verdict on the dispute over the election before the next president is sworn in.

But in a statement, Abayomi Arabambi, spokesman of the Lamidi faction, said the Electoral Act and the Constitution do not provide room for a vacuum.

“Swearing in Tinubu on May 29, may not have any impact on the ongoing legal tussle on the presidential election involving our party, APC and INEC. So, whether the President-elect is sworn in or not, there is right to remove him legally if it is found out that he was not duly elected,” Arabambi said.

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Citing sections 136 and 146 of the constitution, he said, “What Peter Obi is crying for is not supported by the law. A refusal to swear in Tinubu as President will create a vacuum in the system, the law abhors this.

“Even Peter Obi once benefitted from the system of being sworn into office despite pending petitions filed against him before the tribunal by Andy Uba. The Law has to be complied with, which is to swear in Tinubu as president, and if anybody wants to change the narrative, they will have to change the law.”

Reacting in a statement, acting National Publicity Secretary, Labour Party, Obiora Ifoh, said the comments of Arabambi and Apapa have confirmed that they are moles planning to destroy the party for pecuniary gains.

“The text of the statement which was read as commercial in about three television stations in prime time hours suggests that the real sponsors of the crisis in the LP would stop at nothing in ensuring that they sustain the imbroglio.”

“The huge financial war-chest being deployed to achieve this inglorious plot to halt a popular aspiration of millions of Nigerians for a new and prosperous nation, leaves a huge gap on the dexterity and desperation of these evil plotters.

“In all Peter Obi’s public and private statements, he has never said or by implication, insinuate that May 29 should be shifted. He is a democrat and he is one person that believes so much in the judiciary as the last arbiter, and that is why he has resorted to the court to seek justice,” Ifoh said.

He said that LP is worried by faction’s usage as the mouth-piece by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to express their fears, especially on the possibility of not making it to Eagle square on the 29th May, which has continued to give them both sleepless night and has pushed them into deploying an already compromised and fallen members of the LP, led by Apapa and Arabambi as their mouth piece.