With less than 24 hours to the governorship election in Lagos state, the tussle on who is the legitimate candidate for the Labour Party between Ifagbemi Awamaridi, a party chieftain and late-minute PDP decampee, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour lingers.
Recall that the Labour Party had been parading Rhodes-Vivour as its candidate after an alleged ‘illegal’ primary election was conducted to have him replace Awamaridi on the premise that the latter who won the first primary election had stepped down.
Speaking at a press briefing in Lagos on Thursday, Awamaridi reiterated he did not withdraw from the governorship race contrary to claims by some leaders of the party.
He affirmed that he remains the legitimate candidate of the party after he won the party’s governorship primary in July 2022.
“In July 2022, INEC published the name of the Labour party candidate and the name is Prof. Ifagbemi Awamaridi based on the fact that I won the primary,” he said.
“The party forwarded the name to INEC around July 5 and INEC published the name around July 25 and that name subsists.
“Later on, I discovered that the name has changed and some party leaders decided to organise a substitution primary and claimed that I have withdrawn.”
Awamaridi said he had written to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that he had not withdrawn from the race, noting that a candidate could only withdraw on a signed letter of oath or form 11B of INEC
This lingering dispute casts substantial doubts on the candidacy of Rhodes-Vivour with his victory as the ‘substitution primary’ being claimed by Awamaridi to have been fraud.