IBADAN, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA) – Former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, has reacted to the presidential campaign schedule released by the Labour Party.
Omokri, pointed it out that no rally is scheduled for Monday in the South Eastern part of Nigeria, querying why the schedule is arranged in such manner.
He tweeted: “Take a look at the presidential campaign schedule released by the Labour Party. Not a single Peter Obi rally is scheduled for Monday in the SE. They are all scheduled for either Tuesday or Saturday. Why? What is wrong with Monday? Why is Obi avoiding that day? TableShaker”
In the schedule released on Monday, the Labour Party whose presidential candidate is Peter Obi, failed to schedule its campaign rallies for Monday.
Mondays have been taken over by the sit-at-home order issued by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in 2021 in solidarity with its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who has been detained by the Department of State Services since June 2021.
Although IPOB had long ago announced that it has canceled the sit-at-home order, the order seems to have come to stay as the people of the region have continued to observe it, especially as in many cases, some people were attacked, brutalized, or even killed and their properties destroyed by enforcers of the order.
With the heat of political campaigns still on, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Obi who is a two-term former governor of Anambra State, one of the most viable business states in the region, has been dared by opposition politicians including a former aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, Daniel Bwala and Asari Dokubo, to hold campaign rallies in the Southeast states on Monday to prove that he can challenge IPOB.
However, Obi and his supporters under #Obidient Movement have repeatedly insisted that they are neither afraid of IPOB nor have any connection with the secessionist group, and therefore, can and have held #Obidient Movement marches in some parts of the region including in Abia.
But in a campaign schedule released by the party, the Labour Party did not slate any campaign date for Monday in the five major Southeast states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.
The party’s campaign rally timetable had surfaced on the internet on Monday, but its National Publicity Secretary, Arabambi Abayomi, in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday quickly disowned the timetable.
He said that the timetable was neither authorised by the Labour Party leadership nor its presidential candidate, Obi.
Abayomi in the statement said: “Labour Party’s attention has been drawn to a purported OBI -DATTI presidential campaign rallies timetable in circulation.
“I hereby deny the authenticity of this campaign council programme, as the Labour Party’s leadership is not aware of it.”
“Likewise, no one from the Campaign Council has sought the nod of the party’s leadership over the same subject matter,” Abayomi who insisted that Obi did not also authorise anyone to issue any campaign programme.”
Findings have since revealed that the party’s campaign rallies timetable on Obi-Datti 2023 website and the version that circulated on the internet are the same.