Ahead of the 2027 general election, the Labour Party (LP) has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of buying up opposition political parties in order to pave way for President Bola Tinubu to be a consensus presidential candidate for all the opposition parties.
LP also accused the ruling party of instigating crisis in the opposition and using it as an avenue to either hijack the party or lure their members into the APC, including LP elected representatives citing internal crisis.
The Director General of Labour Party Directorate on Mobilisation and Integration, Marcel Ngogbehei, in a statement said, based on the information available, the APC seemed to have compromised one of the major opposition party in the North and another long-time opposition party in the East.
He said that the parties that seem to have been bought over by the President Tinubu-led government are very strategic because they control one state each in their regions.
“The case in hand is the NLC Transition Committee which we suspect is an APC special purpose vehicle to hijack the Labour Party and there are countless others in various opposition parties.”
“The APC and Tinubu are making efforts to turn Nigeria into one-party system. They are busy, working out machinations and trying to buy up political parties both in the East and the North with the aim of weakening the opposition ahead of the 2027 general election.”
“Tinubu is trying to replicate what Abacha did by pressuring parties to adopt him as a consensus candidate or field candidate who cannot give them a run for their seat. But this will not work, Nigerians are wiser now. The poverty in the land which was brought by the APC will be a force against the party in 2027.
“Instead of focusing on delivering good governance, the APC is busy finalising schemes to Buy up opposition political parties and party members just to sell their unsellable candidate to Nigerians in 2027”, Ngogbehei said.
Labour Party also alleged that the APC is working hard to use hunger as a weapon to get the votes of poor Nigerians in 2027.
“If you think that the APC is ready for a fair contest in 2027, you are wasting your time, they have succeeded in impoverishing Nigerians so that they can easily bribe them with cups of rice and beans and few thousands of Naira for their votes.
“The APC has not recorded any significant achievement to convince Nigerians to vote for them in 2027, they are most likely banking on vote buying, thuggery and election rigging to win election as they did in 2023, but they will receive the shock of their lives because Nigerians are wiser now”, he added.
Ngogbehei admonished Nigerians to stand firm with the Labour Party NWC led by Mr Julius Abure and Mr Peter Obi as the pair has been tested and trusted in the 2023 general election when none of them compromised.
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