The Labour Party (LP) has described the conviction of Doyin Okupe for money laundering as a “syndicated attack” to demarket its 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
“If you are going to do this, do this on all candidates who have cases in court,” LP’s spokesman Tanko Yunusa said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday.
Yunusa, however, did not mention the names of ‘candidates’ with drug and corruption cases.
Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu of a Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday had found Okupe guilty of receiving over N200 million cash from former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, ruling that his action violated the Money Laundering Act.
The court held that Okupe was guilty in counts 34, 35, 36, and 59 and sentenced him to two years imprisonment with an option of a fine.
Okupe, an ally of Obi right from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before the duo joined the LP this year, subsequently paid a N13m fine and escaped being jailed.
Okupe, a former aide to then President Goodluck Jonathan, later resigned as the director-general of Obi’s campaigns.
However, Yunusa said ‘Obidients’, as Obi’s loyalists are called, won’t be intimidated or dissuaded by Okupe’s conviction but will be stronger in their pursuit to chase out the All Progressives Congress (APC) from power come February 25, 2023.
The LP spokesman argued that Dasuki, who was said to have given Okupe the money, had been set free by the courts.
“Those who were said to have given the money are living free and those who have been involved in drugs, corruption, at the highest level have not been touched.
“That made us to start thinking that this particular decision or the judgement of the court is another judgemental pick-and-choose one because those who are supposed to have been convicted are not convicted,” he said.
