Kenneth Okonkwo, who served as the spokesperson for the Labour Party’s presidential campaign in 2023, has indicated that he is considering leaving the party, hinting at a possible exit from the LP.
In 2022, Kenneth Okonkwo resigned his membership from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in protest of the party’s decision to field a Muslim-Muslim ticket for the 2023 presidential election. Shortly thereafter, he defected to the Labour Party (LP) just a month later.
“Any party that is not visibly committed to the welfare of Nigerians will most likely not see me there. I don’t rule out going back to anything because change is constant,” Kenneth Okonkwo made the statement in an interview with Symfoni.
“My own Labour Party is not impressing me. Assuming they continue on this trajectory where they cannot even hold an acceptable national convention, then you’d tell me I’d be there?
“I was a spokesperson at the presidential level and I did not know that the Labour Party was having a convention. When I saw it on social media, I thought it was fake. They were rejected in Umuahia because it was a leprous convention.”
“Those people are clowns. It is the greatest joke I have ever seen in a political party, and then you want to position yourself as a party of integrity. You cannot give what you don’t have.”
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The Labour Party (LP) has been gripped by a intense leadership dispute following a move by Lamidi Apapa, the party’s southern deputy national chairman, to proclaim himself acting national chairman in 2023, a development that has sparked internal conflict and power struggles within the party.
The Labour Party’s leadership crisis reached a boiling point in 2024, as a highly contentious national convention in Anambra State resulted in the re-election of Julius Abure as chairman, despite fierce opposition from a significant faction of the party. The contentious event was further marred by the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) decision not to monitor the convention, casting a shadow of legitimacy over the entire process.
The party’s Board of Trustees (BoT) vehemently denounced the convention as a sham, declaring that Abure’s tenure as national chairman had officially expired and that his re-election was therefore null and void. The BoT’s stance only served to further exacerbate the already deep-seated divisions within the party.
