Labour Party denies report of Gov Otti’s planned defection to APC

The Labour Party leadership has maintained that Governor Alex Otti of Abia has no plans to defect to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, ahead of the 2027 general elections.

National Publicity Secretary of the party, Obiora Ifoh, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja.

There have been rumours over plans by no fewer than five first-term opposition governors to defect to APC, preparatory to the 2027 general elections.

The governors, according to media reports, are Alex Otti of Enugu, Peter Mba, Enugu; Sheriff Oborevwori, Delta; Siminalayi Fubara, Rivers and Umoh Eno, Akwa Ibom.

While Mbah, Fubara, Eno, Oborevwori are PDP governors, Otti belongs to the Labour Party, with both parties currently locked in post-2023 election crises.

Ifoh, in the interview, however, said the purported plan by Otti to dump LP for APC was farther from the truth.

“It is a mere rumour and I hope it remains so. For us in the Labour Party, we are in touch with our governor, Dr Alex Otti, and he has assured us that he is not going anywhere, ahead of 2027.

“We believe that he will stay with us, irrespective of some of the issues which we are working hard to resolve,” he said.

The national publicity secretary, who said defection from one political party to another was nothing new in any democratic setting, however, said Otti was not thinking about teaming up with the ruling APC.

“The courts have come up several times to make interpretation as regards Section 84 of the 1999 Constitution and many people who had defected at one time or the other had been challenged in court.

“So, if five governors are planning to defect, it won’t be a new thing, as it had happened in the past,” he said.

Ifoh attributed the rumoured defection to the fact that some governors in the opposition had been having some challenges in controlling their states.

He insisted that the speculated rumour of the only Labour Party governor had no substance or validity.

“We are good in Labour Party and our governor is with us, and we are hoping that by 2027, we will have more governors in our fold,” he said.