Why Peter Obi couldn’t pay party agents during election – Ex-campaign DG Akin Osuntokun

Former director-general of Obi/Datti Presidential Campaign Council Akin Osuntokun has reacted to reports that the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in 2023 Peter Obi didn’t pay some party agents.

In an interview with PUNCH published on Sunday, Mr Osuntokun said the party had problems raising money.

“…We are not in a position to pay all our polling agents. That is the truth. We never had the money to do so. We had to narrow it down to where we can.

“We had a situation in which people that performed the role of agents, and polling agents were not enumerated. It was just their initiative to do so in most parts of the country. It is a fact that we couldn’t pay many of the agents,” he said.

Osuntokun was appointed after former presidential spokesman Doyin Okupe stepped down in 2022 as the campaign council’s director-general following his conviction by a court for money laundering.

Responding to a question about a rumour that funds were mismanaged by some of the executives of the party, Osuntokun said: “Well, I don’t know where the information that the funds were available came from. Some funds were available but it was used to offset and didn’t go around the country. In any case, for anybody who is a party agent, should that be the concern if you truly love the party you are working for?

“Unfortunately, the Labour Party platform is a mixed flag. We have the likes of many of the people in the Labour Party who are there as machinery and things like that. They are not used to the idealism that the ‘Obidients’ represent. The Lamidi Apapa and Arabambi are typical of the Labour Party of the past.”