Factional National Chairman of the Labour Party, Julius Abure, has lambasted  the 2023 presidential candidate of the party, Peter Obi, stressing that he is too desperate to lead Nigeria as a president.

In a statement he personally signed on Thursday, Abure said Obi created the crisis in the Labour Party.

According to him, Obi’s desperation to control the soul of the party had made him go haywire.

Abure accused the former Anambra State governor of receiving so much goodwill from the party leadership and turning around to pay them with evil.

“This is why we have maintained that Peter Obi lacks the  competence, character and capacity to actualise the vision of a new Nigeria.

“Nigerians should not forget in a hurry that it was Peter Obi that created the crisis in the Labour Party which he is now citing as a reason why people should not vote for the party,” Abure said.

Abure said this in response to Obi’s directives ahead of the August 16 by-elections across the country.

Ekwutosblog recalls that Obi had asked his supporters to back the candidates of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, during the forthcoming by-elections across some states in the country.

Former Kaduna State governor and a key member of the opposition coalition, Nasir El-Rufai, has urged the people of the state to vote for the Social Democratic Party, SDP, in Saturday’s local government election.

El-Rufai said electorates should vote for candidates of the SDP in Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Government Areas of the state.

His call comes amid his participation in the opposition coalition that recently adopted the African Democratic Congress, ADC.

The coalition, made up of eminent Nigerians, has vowed to ensure that the President Bola Tinubu-led All Progressives Congress, APC, loses in 2027.

However, El-Rufai, in a video on his Facebook page, wrote: “This is Nasir El-Rufai, your former governor of Kaduna State.

“I’m making this message to appeal to all our voters in Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Government to come out massively on Saturday to vote for the candidates of the Social Democratic Party, SDP.

“The party with the symbol of the white horse, white stallion for the Zaria Ekweri state assembly and Basawa constituency in Sabon Gari Local Government.

“The candidate is Nuhu Abdullah Isada of the Social Democratic Party and Dambala Usman of the SDP for Basawa constituency, please come out and vote massively for these two candidates.”

Video.

President Bola Tinubu had a closed door meeting the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, at the Aso Villa in Abuja today August 14.

Tinubu and Okonjo-Iweala were in a closed-door meeting at the nation’s political capital where they discussed trade matters as they relate to national, continental and global relevance.

After the meeting, the former Minister of Finance spoke to State House correspondents. She stated that the President’s economic policies are working and that it has been able to stabilize the economy.

In her words

‘’We (The WTO) think the President and his team have worked hard to stabilize the economy and you cannot improve on an economy unless it is stable so he has to be given the credit for stability of the economy. The reforms have been in the right direction, What is needed next is growth. We now need to grow the economy and we need to put in social safety net so that people who are feeling the pinch of the reforms can also have some support to be able to weather the hardship’’