Kenneth Okonkwo, a Nollywood actor and former spokesperson for the Labour Party’s (LP) Presidential Campaign Council, has accused Peter Obi of betraying the party during its ongoing internal conflict.
In a widely circulated interview with Symfoni that went viral on Saturday, Okonkwo, who officially quit the Labour Party in February 2025, revealed that Obi ignored his counsel by joining with the troubled Julius Abure-led faction, which he considers a personal betrayal.
“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: Peter Obi betrayed me,” Okonkwo declared.
He claimed Obi was deceived by Labour Party executives who erroneously claimed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had accepted their group. Despite Okonkwo’s warning, Obi returned to help the gang.
“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,” Okonkwo said. “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.’”
Okonkwo said he made private efforts to dissuade Obi from engaging with the group, which he described as “undemocratic” and “agents of the government”.
He alleged that he told Obi that those people had become agents in the hands of the government to destabilise him and that 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,” he said.
According to Okonkwo, Obi ultimately visited the Abure-led faction’s headquarters and publicly supported them, which surprised him. He revealed that faction members emailed him a video of the endorsement to ridicule him.
He pointed out that not until when INEC dissociated itself from Abure did Obi come out to start acting neutral, adding that he had told him he could not be neutral and something had to be done.
