A close ally of Peter Obi, the 2023 Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Oseloka Obaze has aired his view on the internal crisis within the Labour Party and the difficult decisions facing the former presidential candidate.
In an interview with Arise TV, Obaze viewed his decision as he left the party as justifiable as he highlighted the aftermath if Obi considers leaving the LP as well.
When asked if he would advise Obi to walk away from the Labour Party before the 2027 elections, Obaze responded with a metaphor that captured the complexity of the situation:
“It might be a cliché, but you don’t tell a master politician whether he wants to eat his eggs sunny side up or boiled.”
He acknowledged that Obi has a wide circle of advisers, formal and informal, and stressed his belief that Obi “gets good counsel.”
Obaze pointed to the inherent risk of Obi leaving the party, saying, “There’s an inherent danger if he decides to walk away from the Labour Party tomorrow, people will say, ‘Ah, he left. He left APGA. He left PDP. Now he’s leaving Labour.’” This history of Obi’s political moves complicates any decision to exit the Labour Party.
Despite this, Obaze insisted that Obi has “done his utmost to try to reconcile the internal contradictions. And we’ve all contributed to that.” He painted the party as a family with typical disputes, saying, “In a party that is a family; every family has its own squabbles—there comes a time when somebody will say, ‘For the sake of the country, for the sake of the party, let’s shed the salt and talk honestly.’”
Obaze described the long legal battle that culminated in a Supreme Court ruling which was meant to resolve the crisis but has failed to do so. He explained, “You’ve gone all the way to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court decision does not satisfy the requirement—and I think I said that in my letter, in my explanation—that the crisis has gone beyond what could be adjudicated by the court, by morality, or by arbitration, because some people have just dug in.”
He lamented that certain individuals act as if the Labour Party “belongs to them,” while others, including Obi, “can play their own game or you can take a hike.”
Reflecting on his own decision to leave, Obaze was firm and clear: “I decided to take a hike. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
But he was quick to clarify the weight of that choice. “I’ve invested a lot in Labour Party. I’ve invested a lot of politics.”
His concluding remark captured the moment’s gravity: “But there comes a time when you must stand up to be counted, and that’s all there is to it.”
