Politics

Obi: Okupe’s conviction won’t stop my presidential ambition

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, says the conviction of the Director General of his campaign organisation, Dr Doyin Okupe, over money laundering would not break his resolve to be Nigeria’s President.

The Star had reported that a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, on Monday, convicted and sentenced Okupe, the ex-Senior Special Assistant on Media to former President Goodluck Jonathan, to jail for breaching the Money Laundering Act.

The presiding judge, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu, in a judgement, found Okupe guilty in 26 out of the 59 counts preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the N240 million money laundering offence.

Speaking on the development during an interaction with journalists at the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Akwa Ibom State Council Secretariat in Uyo on Monday, Obi said he was undaunted by the conviction and would continue with his campaign and allow the due process of law to take its course.

“I am hearing about it (the conviction) just like you. I am still studying what is coming out of the Court and everything. I believe in the rule of law. It is not going to demoralise me.

“Today, when I arrived Akwa Ibom somebody asked me why I haven’t been using my aircraft because it has been grounded and all that, and I said to him that nothing demoralises me.

“In my life, I have never stayed where they dropped me, otherwise, I would have been where they dropped me before. This election, if they like, let them do anything about people who are around me. I will get there,” Obi, a former governor of Anambra State, said.

On the saying that he does not have the political structure to win the 2023 presidential election, Obi said he was determined to dismantle the existing political structure in the country which he said encouraged corruption and spread poverty among Nigerians.

“The structure they have today is the structure we want to destroy. It is the structure of criminality. It is structure that produced 133 million people living in poverty,

“It is the structure that produced 20 million out-of-school children. It is the structure that has made Nigeria surpass India in infant mortality. It is the structure that will destroy Nigeria and we want to destroy that structure,” the LP presidential standard-bearer stated.

Obi added that his priority would be how to secure a “United Nigeria” and pull people out of poverty.

He said he would work towards the realisation of the Ibaka Deep Seaport in Akwa Ibom if elected as Nigeria’s President in 2023.

“My problem is how to create a future and make Nigeria a productive and not a consuming nation,” Obi stated.

The Star