The Presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, Omoyele Sowore, has ‘revealed’ how he helped the standard bearer of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, to emerge as the presidential candidate of LP.
Sowore, while speaking on Monday at the memorial lecture held in honour of the late human rights lawyer and activist, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, in Lagos, said that the Labour Party ran into a problem in the course of choosing the candidacy of Obi, as there were calls that Obi should not be presented.
Sowore said he, alongside the Senior Advocate of Nigeria and activist, Femi Falana, rose to the occasion by taking legal steps to defend the LP.
“When the Labour Party ran into a problem. There was a member of the LP who insisted that the LP could not present the candidacy of Peter Obi. They had a legal problem. We went and obtained judgment in court; from the Court of Appeal, and handed it over to Falana to use it to defend the Labour Party, and by extension, Peter Obi’s candidacy. Yes! I’m just telling you that we’re in the business of saving people,” Sowore stated.
The pro-democracy campaigner also laid claims to how he purportedly rescued Obi from being impeached as a Governor of Anambra State.
But in the investigations carried out by Global Upfront Newspapers (GUN) to ascertain the truth in the claim shows that Sowore was never a member of the Labour Party and we could not verify his being hired for any form of consultations or services.
Labour Party source at its headquarters could not remember having any dealing with Sowore to warrant his services helping its Presidential candidate to emerge. All we could find, which is also in public domain, is that the front runner and Presidential aspirant in Labour Party before Obi came into the party, Professor Pat Utomi, upon Obi’s coming, voluntarily withdrew for him.
Another information in the public space is that some members of the Labour Party fighting over party leadership went to court, not against Obi, but against themselves. And the matter was settled with a court ruling in favor of one of the factions. Sowore as a Presidential aspirant of another party couldn’t have been helping to save another party.
Also, on helping to save Peter Obi from being impeached when he was Governor of Anambra State, our fact check could not establish any truth. What we actually established was that Obi was indeed impeached by the Anambra State House of Assembly but was restored by the court.
The only fact we were able to establish is that Sowore, although a Presidential candidate of African Action Congress (AAC) has spoken more on the LP candidate negatively than about his own ambition. We could not ascertain why it’s so. But our check reveals that he speaks negatively about Obi at any public function as a Presidential candidate of his party.
Sowore’s party, the AAC is not a front runner in the race like Obi’s party is. So, it’s not clear why he has made Obi the centre-piece of his campaign.
