By Marcus Ikechukwu
Joe Ajaero, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), on Monday, led a delegation of workers’ unions to reinstate Julius Abure, the embattled National Chairman of the Labour Party (LP).
Ajaero said he was aware that since the fortunes of the party were looking bright, impostors were bent on crippling it by all means, a move he threatened will be resisted.
He threatened that Nigerian workers might be compelled to occupy the residential homes of those impostors some of whom orchestrated the suspension of Abure as National Chairman of the party.
A federal high court sitting in Abuja, had ordered Abure to stop parading himself as the national chairman of the party a week after a ward in the Edo State chapter of the party suspended him over alleged anti-party activities.
Shortly after the court order, the party’s national vice chairman, Lamido Bashir Apapa, who had been accused of being sponsored by the opposition parties, took over the party in an acting capacity.
But in another twist, a High Court in Benin also gave an order, restraining anybody from removing the embattled party chairman from his office.
Speaking angrily during a solidarity visit to the party secretariat, Ajaero, who was accompanied by the NLC General Secretary, Emmanuel Ugboaja, TUC leaders and other labour leaders as well as hundreds of workers, said as trustees of the party, no one has the power to occupy any position in the party without their consent.
The labour leader said, “Today, we say enough is enough! Never again will any human being enter here, under any guise, under any order. Even if we lose our leadership, we have to meet as trustees of this Labour party to decide the next line of action.
“For anybody to illegally declare himself either as chairman, secretary or whatever, we urge all workers anywhere in the country, where you see such people, arrest them and bring them to us. The hour has come.
“The Bible says, ‘From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of God suffereth violence, and violence taketh by force. Now, we have come to take our party, we have come to establish our party.
“As the fastest-growing party, you can see that envy and jealousy is creeping in. The people that are pioneering this, to sabotage us, let’s announce here that we know your fathers. If you continue this way, we will go after your fathers.
“We leave it here until we finish our private discussion. Let it be known to the whole world that the NLC fathered LP and we will not abandon our child.”
Ajaero described Apapa and his team as “rodents that will be fumigated with insecticides”, noting that nobody can scuttle the ideal and ideologies of the party including ongoing cases at the tribunal.
“For some time now, we’ve not been visiting our house. We decided to visit our house this afternoon after getting some information that there are some rodents trying to move into our house,” he said.
“We have come with some insecticides to fumigate the house against any rodent that is illegally trying to enter our property. That’s why we are here.
“Incidentally, we didn’t see any rodents, but we will comb around and see whether there are any. The Labour Party is a child of circumstances.
“It was formed when we lost almost all confidence in existing political parties, and we felt that the Labour Party would be an ideal political party that would represent our ideological persuasion. That was why it was formed.
“For anybody or group of people, to think that they will sabotage or derail our ideological movement, we will resist it with the last drop of our blood.
“This was formed by the NLC and the TUC, it is our party. Nobody can come from the “blues” and declare himself as the Chairman or the Secretary of our party without our consent.
“If such people attempt to come here next time, all their property, their houses, we will convert it to labour party offices – their residential houses, we will go and occupy it wherever it is located and they will know that all the property they have was given to them by the Labour.”
Meanwhile, after he resumed office amid tight security, the embattled national chairman of the Party, Abure, said he was not opposed to peace in the party, saying if Apapa and others repent, they would be forgiven of their sins.
Our correspondent, who was at the secretariat during Abure’s resumption, observed that immediately he (Abure) entered through the back door of the building at about 12:41 pm, the security operatives attached to him and those manning the place quickly locked the main gate of the party’s building.
The main entrance door to the building which was locked by the Apapa-led faction, was forcefully broken by Abure’s aides a few minutes after Ajaero and his team arrived.
Abure said, “I want to say clearly that we’re not opposed to the peace of the party. I value peace, and we appreciate the peaceful environment, as the house divided against itself cannot really stand.
“That’s why, for me, I have been very open to our colleagues that it is better to have one united house. You will recall that we may always have disagreements but I’ve always pursued peace.
“The people fighting us, of course, I want to say it here clearly, that there is no justification for it. I want to believe that they are under serious inducement.
“They are not working for this party, they are working for the opposition party. It is very clear, it is very obvious. The party was at its lowest ebb when we came on board.
“We took the party where it was, and we took it to the centre. So, for whatever reason that they may have, to have disagreements, I didn’t expect that they should take it to the level they’ve taken it to.
“It shows that they are heavily induced. It is all over the place that they are not working for the party, and of course, if they are ready to repent from their sins, who are we? Obviously, we will forgive them and allow peace to reign.
“For me, I’m not pretending, I have made it very clear that there is no going back in recovering the mandate given to the Labour Party and our presidential candidate. We’re committed to it and we will continue to pursue it.
“We’re in court, we want to assure Nigerians that we are going to follow the process to the end. We’re going to work hard, we are not going to rest on our oars, until that mandate is reclaimed.
“Across the federation, you saw the injustice that was meted out on us, how our mandates were stolen at the presidential level, at the state governorship level and at the house of assembly level, and even house of reps and Senate.
“I must reassure you that those mandates will be reclaimed, we will pursue it and get it sorted out. What’s happening has not discouraged me. I refused to be discouraged and distracted because I see it as a very formidable form of distraction which opposition political parties are doing.
“Nothing can stop us from pursuing the cases. We will continue to provide the objective result-oriented leadership that we’ve always done.
“There is no gainsaying to the fact that Nigerians are in dire need of good leadership at this point in time. They trusted us and they believed in us, they believed in the party.”
