Veteran actor and politician Kenneth Okonkwo has accused the Julius Abure-led faction of the Labour Party of deceiving the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Okonkwo, who formerly served as spokesperson for the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council before leaving the party in February 2025, made the allegations in an interview with Symfoni TV released on Saturday.
He claimed that Abure and his executives falsely told Obi that they were recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), prompting the former Anambra State governor to return to working with the faction.
Okonkwo lamented that despite warning Obi that the Abure-led executives were acting as agents of President Bola Tinubu’s government aiming to destabilise him, Obi publicly endorsed the faction within 72 hours.
He said, “The Julius Abure-led LP members lied to Obi that the Independent National Electoral Commission had accepted them and Obi surreptitiously went back to them. But I told him: ‘Sir, you have made a public statement on integrity and even if INEC has accepted them, that is not a criterion for you to go back and start dealing with them because they have shown that they are not democratic.
“If you go back to them, they will destroy your political career and everything you have said about integrity will die.
“I told Obi that these people had become agents in the hands of the government to destabilise him.
“And after saying all those things, within like 72 hours, Obi went back to Abure’s office to publicly endorse them and while he was there talking to them, one of the leaders in that executive sent me the video to mock me that the person I was fighting for against them has come to their office to endorse them.”
Okonkwo also accused Obi of betraying him amid the internal party disputes, saying, “Any politician that knows what he’s doing cannot be betrayed by another. If there is anybody that betrayed the other, I can say it emphatically that Peter Obi betrayed me.”
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