The Labour Party (LP) 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, would be stopped from joining the party to contest the 2027 election in view of strict membership registration deadlines under the Electoral Act.
The interim national chairman of the party, Senator Nenadi Usman declared this when she fielded questions when she was a guest of Arise TV on Wednesday.
She said the LP would close its register 21 days before its primaries and to be submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), adding that “it will be too late for him to come back.
“Once we close the register 21 days before primaries, submit the register, the e-register to INEC, you can’t come from behind the door for us to register you and for you to contest the elections. That would be impossible, legally impossible anyway.”
Usman said though Obi had made the party popular in 2023, added that Obi wooed her to defect from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the LP ahead of the last general election.
The former Minister of Finance said “He convinced me to come with him to Labour Party; not just me, many people who are in the Labour Party today were convinced by, let’s join Peter, go to the Labour Party because we believed in equity and fair play.”
According to her, she left the PDP based on rooted belief that the party had failed to zone its presidential ticket to the south, adding that “since they left it open and said there was no zoning and they were trying to field a northerner, we felt no, it’s not fair. Though I’m a northerner, I felt it was not fair.”
