Why Bauchi LP Campaign Director Dumped Obi For Atiku

On Tuesday, the Bauchi State Labour Party campaign director, Alhassan Bawu, left the Labour Party and the party's presidential candidate, Peter Obi’s camp, for the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

The decision which comes in an election month and barely three weeks before the presidential election is strange and unprecedented by all standards, making political observers speculate that there is not much synergy across LP's branches in the country.

But while addressing journalists on Tuesday in Bauchi, Bawu said his defection to PDP was to support Atiku after he and other LP leaders in the Northeast realised that voting for Peter Obi in the coming election would be a waste of votes.

He added that they had decided to pitch their tent with Atiku, having discovered that he is the only candidate with the capacity to lead the country.

“We believe the LP is not strong enough to win a single seat in the Northeast.

"I am using this medium to officially declare that all the North-East executives of the Labour Party are defecting to PDP to support Atiku”, he divulged.

According to him, voting for Peter Obi in the region is “a waste of votes”, which he, alongside his entourage, would not want to risk.

“We don’t want to waste our votes, and we want to use this time to mobilise votes to who has the capacity to win the election,” he elucidated.