A faction within the Labour Party in Ekiti State has disowned a House of Representatives member and governorship candidate of the party, Opeyemi Bamidele, saying it is not in support of his emergence as the party’s governorship candidate in the state.
The group, in a statement by the Chairman, LP in Ado Ekiti Local Government Area of Ekiti State, Anthony Obafemi, on Wednesday, said, “It is wrong for people to claim that the party is extinct in the state with a view to hijacking the party machinery from us.”
It said its members would not succumb to blackmail and cheap propaganda in order to gain more followers.
In apparent reference to Bamidele’s Ekiti Bibiire Coalition, which was fused into the LP in the state following Bamidele’s defection to the party, Obafemi said it was wrong for Bamidele and his cronies to perpetrate the same injustice he claimed to have suffered in the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria in the Labour Party.
“The process through which the state and local government executives emerged were fraught with irregularities because they did not follow the due process laid down by the party’s constitution and therefore the selection/imposition cannot hold and are, hereby, declared null and void.
“Nobody can just come through the back door overnight and rubbish us. We have been in the Labour Party since 2006 and have remained there since,” the group said in the statement.
It said it was not true that the party had gone extinct in the state since the exit of former Governor Ayo Fayose and his supporters, adding that the party had been working hard and was alive and active.
However, the state Chairman of LP, Akin Omole, in a reaction, said the group was instigated by the ruling All Progressives Congress in order to frustrate LP in the state.
