From Jude Idu, Abuja
Ahead of the 2027 presidential election, the Labour Party has accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of perfecting plans to thwart its winning strategy by using the platform of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to achieve this.
Mr Obiora Ifo, spokesperson of the party, in an exclusive interview with Sunday Sun disclosed that the 2023 presidential election exploits have so far attracted the attention and concerns of the rival parties who now seek dubious means to put the party asunder.
He said that the party would rather not be distracted by the smear campaigns of biased PDP and APC stooges who are not even card-carrying members of the party, but focusing on proffering solutions on those things that border on providing good leadership to the people.
Mr Ifo who before now served as Senior Special Adviser (SSA) on Media to former Governor of Enugu State, Senator Chimaroke Nnamani, and later became the Abuja Bureau Chief of Champion Newspaper, said that the party is not oblivious to a handful of internal issues among party faithful, but insisted that such have been handled through the reconciliatory process introduced by Mr Peter Obi, which targeted at bringing all aggrieved party members under one umbrella. Excerpt:
Can you clarify the alleged breach of the Labour Party constitution by Julius Abure on the non-conduct of wards and local government congresses before the National convention held in Nnewi recently?
As you can see, you are at the national headquarters of the Labour Party and the National Chairman, Julius Abure is seated here right now. That goes to show that there is no division in the Labour Party, but just like most other political parties, we can have some dissenting voices. We can have people who are aggrieved for one reason or the other. Some with peculiar reasons while some are for personal interests here and there. But in the Labour Party, we have moved on and you did say that there were no proper congresses as alleged by the aggrieved people, but in the Labour Party, we have a constitution in collaboration with electoral law and accepted by INEC, the Labour Party did everything within the box.
One of the problems those disgruntled members of the NLC have is that they like comparing the Labour Party constitution to that of APC and PDP and that is because most of them are not even card-carrying members of the Labour Party, they don’t even have access to the Labour Party constitution to guide them right from 2002 and the recently amended one. So, it is obvious that they have not even opened the constitution to know the details and modus operandi or the law guiding party nominations to party offices. Number one, in the Labour Party, convention does not start congresses and the reason is that national officers have four-year tenure while the products of wards and Local government congresses have three-three-year tenure. So, it would take a pro-rated arrangement for the party to start congress and end in the convention because we have a system where most of the wards, local government and state congresses are off-season elections. This is a situation where some of them finish their three-year tenure and have conducted fresh ones while the tenure of the national officers, which is four years is still running. So, you can see that congresses and conventions cannot go in a serial election, according to the party constitution. In this case, some of them do not know, unlike the PDP and APC where every office beginning from wards, local government and state executive has a four-year tenure, which terminates at the same time. These are some of the differences and some of the rules they do not understand. And because almost all of them are members of PDP and APC who have come to ruin what we have started. They are PDP and APC members seeking fortune in the Labour Party.
Let me also reiterate that there is no division in Labour Party, but I can tell you that all the disagreements we have had before now have been virtually settled. And I can tell you that all aggrieved members have been reconciled, be they members of the National Assembly, be it other support groups that have issues have been reconciled and to a large extent I am sure you saw the national leader of the party, Mr Peter Obi in one of the occasions telling the media that he attended the meeting of Julius Abure-led NWC, which stated where he belongs because if he does not believe in this present leadership, he wouldn’t be part of the NWC, so that takes care of your question.
Why the sudden conduct of the wards and local government congresses, is it because of the alarm people raised?
No, let me correct that impression, before parties conduct any election, they must have written letters to INEC for a long time. So, it is not that the party wakes up and starts the conduct of elections. The party must have written INEC indicating that such an election is going to happen and on certain dates, which it must monitor. I have just told you how it is done that any state, which is ready for its election would be supported. Delta just had theirs, Edo and others would soon conduct theirs.
Was there any high court judgement in Abuja disqualifying Julius Abure from conducting any other party election owing to the expiration of his tenure?
Absolutely none. As I told you, the national chairman assumed office two years ago after the demise of the former National Chairman, A.A. Salami and the National Executive Council (NEC) elected him to take over the tenure, which was supposed to expire last 2023, but NEC again met in Asaba and gave the NWC one more year because it was an election year and to enable them to conduct the 2023 elections. And the one more year of extension would have expired in June this year and it is incumbent upon the party not to allow the vacuum to exist that was why the party in its wisdom wrote INEC in December notifying it of the intention to conduct a convention and that convention was conducted in March, where new executives emerged. So, you should not depend on your judgment based on the propaganda of inconsolable people. People who have refused to realize that the party has moved on. I can tell you that the Labour Party is not about Abure, it is not an individual, it is an organization guided by law and the moment they deviate from it, then they shall answer for it. That is why all that they are doing is null and void.
2027 is here, and where do you think all these pockets of insurrection are leading the party?
Let me assure you that we are going to 2027 with a united house. We are working hard to ensure that all the reconciliatory efforts being made would come to fruition because before now these people making trouble were not there during the 2019 elections and there was no squabble in the party. But because the party has grown in leaps and bounds, you will agree with me that it is only a ripened orange three that attracts many stones. That is what we are saying and we are trying to weather the storm. I have not said there is no storm, there are and already we have done 90 per cent because right now some of the critical support groups have been coming back and there is a global coordination of Labour Party all over the world right now against 2027. I can tell you that applications are surging from those who want to play coordinating roles all over the globe and if the Labour Party is not strong, such won’t be possible. We agree that the irritating activities of the NLC are giving bad publicity to the Labour Party and we are not fighting back as you can see neither have we gone to the media to make a statement because there is no need because at the end of the day, they will still work for us. So, we are using this medium to announce to them that any trouble they make now, is against the interest of the Labour Party, the interests of Nigerians in 2027, the interests of our partners and democracy because, at the end of the day, the reason for the dividend of democracy to the people should not be met. You can believe me that the inflation rate has risen to 34.5 per cent as I speak with you and that is not what we bargained for. Right now the Nigerian economy is in shambles, that is not what we bargained for. Now, that the Supreme Court has given judgment in favour of local government autonomy, we are also saying that the court should rule that the INEC should be allowed to conduct local government congresses so that the state governors wouldn’t influence or have absolute control of the people at the local governments and states. So, that elections cannot be influenced by the state governors. I just told you what happened in Delta State where about 99.9 per cent of the local government congresses went to the state ruling party and such going around the whole state. And the moment INEC is allowed to do that just like what happened to the FCT and in Kaduna, when Mallam El-rufai allowed them to do the same and when that happens, we would see other parties being part of the state and local government executives. These are the things we should focus on to allow democracy to thrive.
Let’s look at this critically, when you said some aggrieved members are ‘disgruntled’ even when Mr Peter Obi in a reconciliatory move had reasons to hear their side of the story?
Well, I give kudos to the Nigeria Labour Congress in conjunction with other leaders who formed the Labour Party, but the moment the Labour Party was formed, the NLC statutorily no longer had a leadership role in the party. The reason is that an organization cannot own and control another organization and the Labour Party has become an incorporated body that can sue or be sued. In this regard, what the NLC would have done or can still do is to mobilize their members to register as individual members of the Labour Party and in that way, such individuals can vie for positions from wards, local government to the national level. But the situation here is that even the national president of NLC is not a card-carrying member of the party. Even as a civil servant, Nigerian law recognises that individual civil servants can be members of political parties. So, one cannot probate and approbate at the same time so what they needed to do, was get all the members which they claim they have all the local governments and show more than partisan interests in an organization called the Labour Party and through that, they can have stakes. So, they shouldn’t stay in their cosy offices and run other political organizations. We do not subscribe to that because the constitution of the party does not have such provisions. So, for one to be a member of the Labour Party, he or she must be a card-carrying member and secondly, he or she must be paying dues. And as we speak, these two critical things are lacking in the membership of NLC especially some of them that contested elections at the other political parties and lost. Some of them were in the 2023 presidential campaign of APC and PDP and they want to be there and also want to have control over the Labour Party. So, that has been the matter and that is what we have been trying to explain to them that we are going to have another convention in 2028 that they can still get what they want if they can follow the rules. If they can begin now to propagate the interest of the Labour Party among the workers before time they must have entrenched themselves or the workers to take over the leadership of the party from the grassroots. We always advise them that politics is done from the grassroots not at the top and they do not have any presence there. So, we are still using this approach, begging them because that is what our principal believes in reconciliation, and instead of coming to constitute public nuisance with miscreants, they should try not to go to court so that these side lines would be interpreted. We admonished them never to picket organizations that their members are not part of.
Can you possibly clarify the reasons for sole administratorship in the party leadership?
I don’t know what you mean by that and I can say unequivocally that what we have in line with our party constitution is congress and convention and the national level and each of the elections has guidelines on how such elections are conducted. So, if I can show you the party constitution, there is nowhere that such was mentioned and there is nowhere it was written that there shall be a vacuum for a year after the expiration of tenure before an election is held even when we know that nature abhors a vacuum and our system is democratic enough and let me give you an instance about three to four states within the next one month will have their wards, local governments and states congresses because leadership there, has come to an end and there is the need to do democratically elected congresses.
So, several contestants from different states are now coming to purchase nomination forms. I can tell you that states like Anambra, Imo, and Delta just had theirs recently and Gombe did their own last week. Akwa Ibom is on the line and these are states that their leadership has come to an end and it is not a holistic thing, but for wards and local governments whose tenure has expired. So, when people think that congresses and conventions in other parties must go the same way as the mega parties, they are wrong because we prepare the party to suit our level of resources. And as a party just growing we live within our means. That is why people have caretakers in some local government areas pending when they have money to organize congresses.
Looking at the Northern part of the country, it was obvious that we did not do well there and we kept working until we had a good structure to organize proper congresses instead of caretaker bases.