Chief Innocent Sunday Okeke is the Vice Chairman, of South East of the Labour Party. In this interview with Richard Anyebe of Overtnews, he speaks about the presidential campaign list of the party and the chances of the party to win the presidential polls as well as governorship and national assembly elections among other issues.
Overtnews:
Let us start with the controversy surrounding the presidential campaign list, what has happened, and what is the state of that controversy right now.
Chief Innocent Sunday Okeke:
I don’t think there is any controversy surrounding the list. The first time, the list of 1,234 names were released and maybe mistakenly some names appeared where they are not supposed to appear, and immediately, the party took it back and remodified it and came up with about 1,453 or thereabout.
And it was done to accommodate every voice. The Labour party is an all-inclusive political party, a party for the masses. The masses are interested to participate in the programme of the Labour Party so the party listened to their plight. So it wasn’t a controversy. It was a voice of inclusiveness, people said they want to be included more and the Labour party opened the window and allowed for more inclusive participation. So there wasn’t any controversy.
Overtnews:
To the concerns by some political analysts that your party only fielded just 78 Senatorial candidates out of 109 seats, what can you say about this because there have been these reactions that your party has no political structure across the country?
Chief Innocent Sunday Okeke:
You will agree with me that political parties are made up of human beings. The moment a very credible somebody with his image comes into any political party, it tends to change the scope of that party. So by the time Peter Obi came, it was at the tail end of the submission of forms, and immediately the thing went up like a bang and lot number of people started coming to Labour Party to participate in the competition from Labour Party. So having about 70 something from 100 and above is a clear indication that we are real. We are not doing any hanky panky, we are not manipulating to put people here and there. We put people where we have the strength then, but after the submission of names of candidates, till now, more than three, four months, Labour Party has spread all over Nigeria.
When they talk about structure, I don’t really understand what they mean by structure. The structure is made up of people. The Labour party is an offshoot of the Nigerian Labour Congress, and the Trade Union Congress, which have their structure in the whole locality of Nigeria, and when you talk about structure, these are the structure that Labour Party is using. Then, we have the people, the market men, the market women, and the artisans.
Everybody is interested, everybody wants to participate with the Labour Party. And that was what translated into the demand for the presidential campaign list, that people want to participate more and the Labour party opened their window.
So what they mean by their structure, is the old structure they have put down for Nigeria, the structure for stealing, the structure for bribery and corruption. The structure they put here and there to rig elections. If that is what they mean by structure, we are waiting for them, with the new electoral law I don’t know if they can push more with that, but if you’re talking about real structure, the Labour party is well structured now all over Nigeria and we are doing the work every day to deepen it to the micro-unit area, so we have our structure.
Overtnews:
How certain are you that your party will win the presidency and a good number of the national assembly seats and as well states?
Chief Innocent Sunday Okeke:
The indices are there. If an election is a reflection of the will of the people, then talking about winning it by the Labour party is as simple as A, B, C, D. The whole of Nigeria is yearning for change. They want to change from the old draconic, killings and disasters that Nigeria has been put into for the longest time.
They want to change from there to a new order, a new order of political reorganisation that will bring a complete and positive change to the polity in Nigeria and it is only Labour Party, which has presented itself in such a way and presented the most credible, acceptable candidate. So we are winning it, no two ways about it. Even if they come with “mago mago” we are waiting for them, and we are winning it.
