The Labour Party, LP, in Ebonyi State has threatened to drag Ifeanyi Ogba to court over his defection to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
Ogba won the 2023 general election on the platform of the Labour Party to represent Onicha East state constituency in the Ebonyi State House of Assembly.
The publicity secretary of the Ebonyi State Labour Party, Chief Innocent Igiri, disclosed this during the enlarged stakeholders meeting of the party held at the San Diego Hotel in Abakaliki on Thursday.
He stated that the platform on which the lawmaker contested the election belongs to the Labour Party and threatened they would reclaim their mandate.
The party spokesperson noted that the Ebonyi State chapter of the party will not take part in the forthcoming local government election, saying that local government elections in Nigeria are a selective activity.
He, however, stated that the national transition committee has already started repositioning the Labour Party across the country and Ebonyi State is not left behind.
According to him: “The local government election in Ebonyi State is one group activity and we are encouraging the Attorney General of the Federation to continue what he is doing to get governors to implement various laws that give local government autonomy and also to make it a law that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should be conducting local government elections. That is when we will be proud to participate in local government elections.”
He added: “We issued a disclaimer when we saw that some people whom we didn’t know had purchased nomination and interest forms. We quickly went to the media, stating that the Labour Party does not have any candidates for the local government election in Ebonyi State.
“The way some politicians play their politics in the state is that they will go and bring someone who is not a Labour Party member to stand in for election so that they will say that Labour Party has failed the election, which is why we made it categorically clear that we do not have any candidates for local government elections.”
He further stated that the party is unperturbed by the defection of some of its members to the ruling All Progressive Congress, APC.
“We are going to challenge the Labour Party House of Assembly member who recently defected to the All Progressive Congress to court because his mandate belongs to our party,” he affirmed.
