The newly appointed Director General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun, has revealed that he is no longer interested in continuing as the senatorial candidate of the Zenith Labour Party ZLP) in Ekiti Central Senatorial District.
Speaking while appearing on Channels TV programme Politics Today on Wednesday, Osuntokun said the call to serve as the DG to Peter Obi’s presidential campaign was a higher calling compared to the senate seat.
Osuntokun was named as a replacement for Doyin Okupe, who stepped down as campaign DG after he was convicted of money laundering.
According to Osuntokun, he had not broken any law by agreeing to work with Obi while being a candidate of another party.
“I have abandoned it,” he said of his senatorial aspiration,
“The campaign office has issued a press release in that respect. What law have I breached in accepting the appointment? What law has the presidential candidate who appointed me beached in appointing me?”
“I can’t help anybody who wants to pursue notoriety as a way of life. The man who is doing this is supposedly the national publicity secretary of the Labour Party. Ask him: why would a national publicity secretary of a party do that to his own party?
“So, it’s a redundant question at any rate. It’s of no consequence at all, whether legally or constitutionally — very frivolous. There is no moral burden at all.
“It is a higher order of priority. Joining the Obi campaign is a higher national priority than any other aspiration. As a citizen of this country, who has a realistic appreciation of what we need to move Nigeria forward, you can’t compare an aspiration to be in the senate to the position that I have occupied.
“All these kinds of platitudes are unnecessary. In Nigeria today, there is no way I can define my political and moral priorities better than the path I have followed.
“I have no moral burden. I am stepping to a higher sacrificial position. I don’t need to publicly declare it. [Ekiti ZLP senatorial candidacy] is a redundant position. I have the perfect freedom to decide what to do at any minute, so long as I have not breached any legal position. The step I am taking is of greater moral consequence for Nigeria,” he said.
