Factional National Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party, Abayomi Arabambi, has made a bold claim that the party’s failure in the 2023 general elections was self-inflicted rather than caused by external rigging. In an interview with Arise News from 10:26, Arabambi disclosed that poor internal coordination and lack of proper election management led to the party’s collapse at the polls. He stressed that blaming President Bola Tinubu for rigging was misleading and dishonest.
Arabambi explained that one of the party’s major failures was its inability to provide polling agents in over 54,000 out of the 189,000 polling units nationwide. This significant gap, he argued, left the Labour Party’s votes unprotected and vulnerable. “Which election are we now saying we won?” he questioned, emphasizing that such a shortfall undermined any realistic chances of electoral victory. He further noted that this weakness created a division between Peter Obi’s camp and Julius Abure’s National Working Committee.
In a private conversation with Peter Obi, Arabambi said he advised the former presidential candidate to take a more honest and strategic approach. Rather than relying on unproven allegations of rigging, he urged Obi to start laying the groundwork for the 2027 elections. According to him, the Labour Party lost credibility by filing a petition in court without attaching results from thousands of polling units. “We rigged ourselves out,” he said, admitting the party’s internal failure.
Arabambi argued that continuing to blame the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or the ruling APC only distracts from the Labour Party’s real problems. He called for self-reflection and honesty within the party’s leadership and warned against using propaganda to cover up administrative lapses. He believes the party must now purge itself of denial if it hopes to compete meaningfully in future elections.
“I met PO sometimes and I told him point blank, ‘Oga, this is not the way we are going to run this election. Let us prepare for 2027.’ We should not stand here and be accusing Bola Tinubu of rigging. We rigged ourselves out because how can we lose results in 54,000 polling units out of 189,000? What then do we have lawyers who filed your petition without results to the court?” Arabambi stated.
