From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
The Labour Party (LP) appeared on the Nigerian political landscape in 2023 with a bang.
The dominant parties; the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) underestimated its capacity and capability of morphing from an underdog status to a major force.
When Peter Obi joined the party in May 2022, many said the party had no structure, time, human resources and financial war chest to change the political dynamics of Nigeria. But LP dealt all doubting Thomases a hard blow.
It took off in 2023 with massive mobilization of youths who bought into the ideologies of the party which Peter Obi epitomized.
In the build up to the presidential and other elections, it became crystal clear that the party had become a movement too hard to derail.
It quickly drove even those who had written it off as just another social media catchphrase to acknowledge it as a powerful force.
Owing to the rise of LP, the 2023 elections will go down in history as some of the most hotly contested ones in the nation. It was a very unpredictable election. There were three equally strong candidates running for the office of the nation’s most powerful citizen for the first time in a long time.
Obi’s popularity spread like wildfire and so, it came as a shock to many when Bola Tinubu of the APC emerged as the victor of the election.
Many political pundits wondered why the country erupted in complete despondency rather than jubilation when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the result of the election on Match 1.
LP had rejected the results of the presidential election, insisting they were manipulated and did not accurately represent the will and actual votes of the electorate.
Its National Chairman, Barrister Julius Abure, had expressed shock and disappointment at the outcome of the election, stating that the country was losing its democracy and sliding towards dictatorship.
According to Abure, “What transpired in Nigeria since the February 25 presidential election is a clear testament that our institutions are not working and that we may be sliding towards dictatorship. It is very clear that the executive has hijacked both the judiciary and the legislature. This is so unfortunate for our democracy and it is even more for the people of Nigeria.
“All that our forebears taught us has been destroyed within a short space of time because of the unbridled ambition of a few. The founding fathers fought with their lives to achieve independence for the country.
“People lost their lives in the struggle to keep our democracy and all these years people have been struggling to achieve electoral and constitutional reforms. Regrettably, all of these efforts and struggles have been destroyed today.’’
So, in an attempt to reclaim what it saw as a stolen mandate, LP had marched to the tribunal to alter the election’s result, equipped with a drum of evidence and its faith in the support of the electorate to prove electoral fraud.
Unfortunately, the party lost before the tribunal and the Supreme Court, which rejected the People Democratic Party’s (PDP), Atiku Abubakar’s and the Labour Party’s (LP) petition against Tinubu for lack of merit.
There was a lot of tension in the country during this time as ‘Obidient movement’ members continued to violently protest the election results in large numbers on social media, airing their complaints and even drawing attention from the international community. However, Obi was able to quell the escalating resentment among his followers and avert a potential full-scale political conflict.
Despite not clinching the presidential seat, LP, riding on the Obi waves recorded many victories in both the National and State Assemblies as well as successfully grabbing a governorship position in Abia State.
Thanks to the Labour Party and the Obidient movement, a lot of unexpected persons won seats at the parliament, bringing onboard a lot of new bees and even unseating some well-known long-serving lawmakers.
The party won Six senatorial seats and 34 at the House of Representatives, in addition to numerous other seats at the various state assemblies.
LP will be remembered as one of the political parties to achieve such widespread appeal in the shortest amount of time and as one of the fastest-growing in the nation, if not all of Africa.
Meanwhile, it has not been a completely smooth ride for the party since its re-emergence in mid May. There have been many successes and there have been many failures as well.
The party in fact started off on a very bumpy ride. Before, during and after the elections, LP has always been submerged in serious crises. From internal disputes that nearly prevented the party from competing in the race to leadership crises that split the party into opposing factions and even diminished its resolve to pursue legal action, a plethora of scandals and dramatic events transpired between the two groups.
The Labour Party was the target of multiple purportedly funded attacks that undermined its reputation and destabilized it both at national and state levels.
At some point, the National chairman was suspended by a high court in Abuja over allegations of fraud while the party’s factional chairman, Lamidi Apapa and his team took over and sealed the party’s office in Abuja.
LP claimed they were all orchestrated attacks by the ruling party to derail the party from recovering its stolen mandate.
Obi and his running mate, Baba Ahmed-Datti were framed for treasonable felony offense. They were accused of planning an insurrection.
Obi was also harassed and detained by London immigration officials at Heathrow Airport over alleged impersonation.
Just before the election, there was an audio recording of a telephone conversation alleged to be between him and founder of Winners Chapel, Bishop David Oyedepo, where he (Obi) was purported to have asked the cleric to mobilise support for him ahead of the disputed election.
Countless lies were continuously dished out to the public in an effort to harm the pair’s reputations and cast doubt on their suitability for the positions they were running for.
In the past year, the party suffered numerous targeted attacks and acts of violence against its members and candidates, resulting in the deaths of many of them.
Despite everything, the LP has unquestionably continued to be a powerful force and a formidable rival to both the ruling party and the PDP, which was the sole major opposition until recently.
Just recently, Obi had announced that the party was ready to play its new role as Nigeria’s main opposition party in the new year.
According to him, the onerous responsibility is to have LP remain firmly in opposition and keep the APC on its toes to protect the country and interest of Nigerians.
He said, “Nigerians are now very aware and convinced that good governance, inclusive development, and accountable leadership expected in a functional democracy continue to elude us.
“But we must be consistent and resolute in our demand for the rule of law, regulatory quality, and government effectiveness for transformative solutions to a litany of our social problems.
“If there is one fundamental threat to our democracy, it is the undermining and weakening of our national institutions and the capture of state affairs and resources by a few individuals and private interests.
“This must stop for Nigeria to move forward and function as an inclusive and sustainable society and nation.”