The Labour Party (LP), with Peter Obi as its Presidential candidate, has called the bluff of the Presidential candidate of the New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP), Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, attributing the collapse of the talks on the alliance between the two parties to Kwakwaso’s insistence that he would be flag bearer of the merger.
The temporary running mate to LP’s Peter Obi in the person of Dr. Doyin Okupe, in a Channels Television programme “Politics Today” today, July 5, confirmed that the merger failed because Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP insisted on being the presidential flag bearer even when a northern Muslim of same extraction (Muhammadu Buhari) is about to complete eight years in office.
He said that during the coalition talks, he had asked the NNPP leadership if it was fair to field Kwankwaso, a northerner, of which the NNPP leadership said there was nothing wrong with that.
Okupe said that LP is now looking at young running mate of northern extraction, adding that the penetration of Obi in the south is very strong while that of the north is like 20 percent, hence, the need to get a vibrant youth from the north as a running mate.
He said that Kwankwaso is wrongly relying on age as though that gives an edge in political leadership, added that Kwankwaso does not match Obi in terms of national appeal.
“That doesn’t answer the question the youths are asking.
“The alliance between LP and NNPP is dead over four weeks.”
Okupe argued that it is NNPP that was trying to leverage on the popularity of Peter Obi
