Mondays have been taken over by the sit-at-home order issued by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in 2021 in solidarity with its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who has been detained by the Department of State Services since June 2021.
The Labour Party whose presidential candidate is Peter Obi has failed to schedule its campaign rallies for Monday in the South-East region of Nigeria.
Mondays have been taken over by the sit-at-home order issued by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in 2021 in solidarity with its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, who has been detained by the Department of State Services since June 2021.
Although IPOB had long ago announced that it has canceled the sit-at-home order, the order seems to have come to stay as the people of the region have continued to observe it, especially as in many cases, some people were attacked, brutalised, or even killed and their properties destroyed by enforcers of the order.
With the development, many business premises and even some government offices do not open on Mondays as business owners and some government workers have seen the day as a permanently established holiday, despite its adverse effect on businesses and the economy of the region.
With the heat of political campaigns still on, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Obi who is a two-term former governor of Anambra State, one of the most viable business states in the region, has been dared by opposition politicians including a former aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri, Daniel Bwala and Asari Dokubo, to hold campaign rallies in the Southeast states on Monday to prove that he can challenge IPOB.
However, Obi and his supporters under #Obidient Movement have repeatly insisted that they are neither afraid of IPOB nor have any connection with the secessionist group, and therefore, can and have held #Obidient Movement marches in some parts of the region including in Abia.
But in a campaign schedule released by the party, the Labour Party did not slate any campaign date for Monday in the five major Southeast states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.
According to the campaign schedule sighted by SaharaReporters, the party scheduled its campaign to hold in Enugu, Enugu State capital on Thursday, December 8; Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital on Friday, December 9; Onitsha, Anambra State on Saturday, December 10; Owerri, Imo State capital on Tuesday, December 13 and Umuahia, Abia state capital on Wednesday, December 14.
Meanwhile, its campaign rally in Ibadan, Oyo State capital in the Southwest region was scheduled for Monday, November 21, while that of Calabar, Cross River State capital in the South South region was also scheduled for Monday, October 31. Similarly, the party’s campaign rally in Katsina, Katsina State capital in the North West has been scheduled to hold on Monday, November 7.
The party’s campaign rally timetable had surfaced on the internet on Monday, but its National Publicity Secretary, Arabambi Abayomi, in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Tuesday quickly disowned the timetable, saying that the timetable was neither authorised by the Labour Party leadership nor its presidential candidate, Obi.
Abayomi in the statement said, “Labour Party’s attention has been drawn to a purported OBI -DATTI presidential campaign rallies timetable in circulation.
“I hereby deny the authenticity of this campaign council programme, as the Labour Party’s leadership is not aware of it.”
“Likewise, no one from the Campaign Council has sought the nod of the party’s leadership over the same subject matter,” Abayomi who insisted that Obi did not also authorise anyone to issue any campaign programme, added.
However, SaharaReporters crosschecked the party’s campaign rallies timetable on Obi-Datti 2023 website and the version that circulated on the internet which was disowned by the party’s spokesperson, and noticed that there was no difference in the arrangement or the scheduled dates.