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… says both working for personal aggrandisement
By Chukwudi Nweje
The crisis in the Labour Party (LP) got messier on Friday with some stakeholders in the party accusing the embattled National Chairman of the party, Julius Abure, and National President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero of letting their aggrandisement get in the way of their core responsibilities to the working class.
The group under the banner of the Lagos Assembly of Labour Veterans and Trade Unionists, noted that Abure and Ajaero have expended time and energy on who will control the Labour Party while governments at all levels exploited the Nigerian people.
The group, therefore, demanded the immediate resignations of Abure and Ajaero for failing in their mandate.
It said, noted that the struggle for the control of the Labour Party between Abure and Ajaero
He said, “On both sides of the Labour front, the reality of the situation is that workers have been made to suffer a crushing defeat, from which they will continue to leak their open wounds and also find it extremely difficult to quickly heal.
“On top of this disconcerting labour leadership ineptitude, what is going on in the Labour Party under the watch of s Abure, is a rape of democracy.
Addressing a press conference in Lagos, spokesman of the group, Isah Tijjani, a former Vice President of NLC and former National Deputy President of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), who was also one-time Presidential aspirant on the platform of the Labour Party while commiserating with Abure on the recent alleged assassination attempt on his life and arson at his house, said the rift between Abure and Ajaero has encouraged government at all levels to implement anti-people policies and to exploit workers unchallenged.
He said, “With the leadership of both the Labour Party and the NLC, now focusing their full attention on petty squabbles, governments at all levels have exploited these rifts to introduce unpalatable economic measures aimed at keeping the workers and their poor families in a permanent state of abominable penury and social deprivation.
“The amount of energy, time and resources that have been needlessly dissipated in this raging battle for personal aggrandisement, leave a sour taste in the mouth.
The discomforting aspects of this unfortunate situation is the resultant callous and complete abandonment of the constitutional duties and core responsibilities duly bestowed upon these leaders, namely; to strongly promote and protect the rights and freedoms of their toiling members, against any forms of unlawful encroachment by some individuals, government or the organised private sector.
“On the contrary, Nigerian workers have been everywhere abandoned to their fate, consigned to face a gloomy future, totally devoid of delightful hopes and cheering promises. As the prospect of thus escaping from the grip of multi-dimensional poverty dims for the masses of our people, the space to impose more burdens on the working class continues to be fully occupied by harsher economic policies.
“From the Federal Government’s sudden and abrupt withdrawal of petroleum subsidy to the drastic devaluation of the national currency and the newly announced insensitive hikes in the costs of electricity tariff, the abysmal failure of the leaders of the Labour Unions and the Labour Party to provide credible challenge to these anti-people policies are indeed sufficient basis, for Nigerian workers to demand their resignation, without any further delay.”
Tijjani said Abure’s desperation to remain LP National Chairman made him ignore the constitution of the party and also alienated some stakeholders of the party.
He added, “In his desperate attempts to cling to power at all cost, Abure egregiously stepped on the big toes of all prominent party and political stakeholders; the chairman failed to hold or adhere strictly to wider consultations with varying interest groups in the party and also offended the provisions of the party’s constitution and grossly violated the rulings of the Consent Judgement, which ordered the contending parties to hold an expansive and all-inclusive national convention of the party”.
He described the Nnewi, Anambra State National convention of the party where Abure was said to have been re-elected as National Chairman as an “Alice in the wonderland” Kangaroo convention.
“The Kangaroo Convention is null, void and of no effect whatsoever, as the tenures of the chairman and that of the National Working Committee (NWC) have since elapsed. We, therefore, dmand a thorough forensic examination and investigation of the party’s finances” he said.
CHUKWUDI NWEJE,
THE SUN PUBLISHING LIMITED
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