Veteran actor and former spokesperson for the Labour Party’s Presidential Campaign Council, Kenneth Okonkwo, has publicly accused Peter Obi of betraying him during the ongoing leadership crisis within the Labour Party.
In a newly released interview with Symfoni, which gained attention over the weekend, Okonkwo shared details of his decision to leave the party in February 2025 and explained what he described as Obi’s disappointing actions.
Okonkwo said he had warned the former presidential candidate against aligning with the Julius Abure-led faction of the party, a group that has been at the center of controversies, including accusations of financial misconduct and undemocratic behavior. Despite this, Obi allegedly went ahead to back the faction.
He said, “Any politician that knows what he’s doing cannot be betrayed by another. If there is anybody that betrayed the other, I can say it emphatically that Peter Obi betrayed me.
“The Julius Abure-led LP members lied to Obi that the Independent National Electoral Commission had accepted them and Obi surreptitiously went back to them but I told him: ‘Sir, you have made a public statement on integrity and even if INEC has accepted them, that is not a criterion for you to go back and start dealing with them because they have shown that they are not democratic. If you go back to them, they will destroy your political career and everything you have said about integrity will die.’”
He said that despite privately urging Obi not to align with a group he described as “undemocratic” and “agents of the government,” Okonkwo said Obi went ahead to publicly endorse them.
“I told Obi that these people had become agents in the hands of the government to destabilise him. What they did was absolutely illegal and unconstitutional, I told him that if he went back to them, I wouldn’t join him in doing so.
“Thereafter, I called all the people that were in the inner circle and told them the same thing about what Obi was trying to do. I told them he wanted to go back with the Abure people and if he did, I wouldn’t go back with him because I do not swallow back my words.
“And after saying all those things, within like 72 hours, Obi went back to Abure’s office to publicly endorse them and while he was there talking to them, one of the leaders in that executive sent me the video to mock me that the person I was fighting for against them has come to their office to endorse them.
“It was when INEC dissociated itself from Abure that Obi came out to start acting neutral but I told him he could not be neutral and something had to be done,” he added.
