New squabbles appear to be brewing within the Labour Party (LP) ahead of Saturday’s governorship election over who is the party’s genuine governorship candidate.
This comes as a party chieftain, Ifagbemi Awamaridi, insisted that he is still the party’s governorship candidate in Lagos state.
Awamaridi denied withdrawing from the race during a press conference in Lagos on Thursday, saying the case is still before the Supreme Court.
This would be a new source of concern for Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, who has been campaigning and gaining publicity as the Lagos LP governorship candidate for Saturday’s election.
Arabambi insisted at the press conference that he had not withdrawn from the governorship race, despite claims by some party leaders.
He claimed that in July 2022, he won the party’s governorship primary.
In July 2022, INEC published the name of the Labour party candidate and the name is Prof. Ifagbemi Awamaridi based on the fact that I won the primary,” he said.
The party forwarded the name to INEC around July 5 and INEC published the name around July 25 and that name subsists.
Later on, I discovered that the name has changed and some party leaders decided to organise a substitution primary and claimed that I have withdrawn.
Awamaridi went on to say that he had written to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to say that he had not withdrawn from the race and that he is awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision on the matter.
However, the chairman of the Lagos Labour Party, Dayo Ekong, told members of the public to ignore Awamaridi because he is being used by the opposition to disrupt the party and that he is not a genuine Labour Party candidate.
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INEC announced Ifagbemi Awamaridi as the LP governorship candidate for Lagos in the 2023 elections in July 2022.
However, Bashiru Apapa, the LP deputy national chairman, told journalists in August 2022 that Awamaridi had formally withdrawn from the race because he was only a “placeholder” for the party’s governorship candidate slot.
Apapa went on to say that the party would hold a replacement primary.
Awamaridi, on the other hand, insisted that he had not withdrawn from the race and had sworn an affidavit of non-withdrawal before the federal high court in Abuja.
Nonetheless, on August 10, 2022, the LP held a substitution primary election in Ikeja, Lagos, which resulted in Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour receiving 111 votes.
Moshood Salvador, a former All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain, finished second with 102 votes.