The ongoing battle for power and control of the Labour Party between the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the National Working Committee, NWC of the party, entered a precarious stage last week when the NLC formally announced its decision to take over the party due to speculation that the LP presidential candidate in the 2023 general election, Mr Peter Obi, may have dumped embattled National Chairman, Julius Abure, backing moves to rescue party.
Briefly after the Labour Party’s Board of Trustees (BoT)declared the controversial convention that returned Julius Abure as National Chairman of the party, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, which is supposed to give legal backing to the convention by monitoring it, declared it a “charade” attributing it to a baseless campaign and washing hands of it.
Legally, Section 82(1) of the Electoral Act, 2022, states that political parties shall give INEC at least 21 days’ notice of convention, congress, conference or meeting. This includes the convention or meeting convened for any sort of merger or election of members into its executive committees, other governing bodies or nominating candidates.
The convention was held at Nnewi in Anambra State after going through various modifications about the venue.
The Presidential candidate of the party in the 2023 general election, Peter Obi has described the Nnewi convention in negative terms.
According to him, the time had come for Abure and the leadership of the party to do the right thing in order to rescue it.
“We promised to build Nigeria, we did not promise to build a new Labour Party,” he said.
The NLC’s Chairman of BoT, Comrade S.O. Z Ejiofor announced the union’s take-over of the party and declared the Wednesday, March 27, 2024, Nnewi convention a “farce,” citing the March 20, 2018 Federal High Court judgement delivered by Justice Gabriel Kolawole as his legal authority.
Following the judgement, the NLC, Trade Union Congress and Abure had signed an agreement in the presence of INEC officials on June 27, 2022, sticking to the mandate as directed by the court.
However, investigations further indicates that the aforementioned non-partisan members are only waiting on Peter Obi to decide on “the next step”.
Sources confirmed that the NLC thinks this is the right time to reform the Labour Party.
Chinedum Anayo