Posts falsely claim Alex Otti is the first elected governor from the Labour Party

Shortly after Nigeria’s Labour Party candidate Alex Otti won the gubernatorial election in the southeastern state of Abia on March 18, 2023, social media users began circulating a claim that he was the party’s first elected governor in history. But this is false: that honour belongs to Olusegun Mimiko, who became Labour’s first elected governor in 2009 after a successful court appeal against the results of the state elections in Ondo two years earlier.

“First Labour Party Governor. Your Excellency @alexottiofr congratulations sir,” reads a tweet shared on March 20, 2023, and retweeted more than 2,700 times.

The post was published by an account called “Peter Obi Grassroots Mobilization”, the official handle of the Labour Party’s support base for presidential candidate Peter Obi.

Several accounts elsewhere on Twitter and Facebook made the same claim, includinghere and here.

Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission) declared Otti the winner of Abia state (news story archived here). He was the only governor elected from the Labour Party in 2023.

But the claim that this makes Otti, 58, the party’s first-ever governor is false.

Mimiko the first

The gubernatorial elections of 2007 in Ondo state initially saw Olusegun Agagu of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) emerge as the winner.

Violence and irregularities marred the presidential polls that year, with the European Union observers sayingthe “elections fell far short of basic international standards” (archived here).

Human Rights Watch said (archived here) that “similar patterns of fraud and abuse” occurred during the state governorship elections a week earlier.

Olusegun Mimiko, the Labour Party’s candidate in Ondo who lost to Agagu, asked the courts to cancel the results and declare him the winner.

A screenshot showing Segun Mimiko holding the flag of the Labour Party

Two years later, an appeal court annulled (archived here) Agagu’s victory on February 23, 2009, handing the governorship to Mimiko.

Mimiko served as governor from 2009-2017 before joining the main opposition People’s Democratic Party.