‘We don’t want illegal chairman’ — NLC declares solidarity for Abure, ’embattled’ LP leader

Officials of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Monday, stormed the national secretariat of the Labour Party (LP) in Abuja to show solidarity with Julius Abure, embattled national chairman of the party.

A federal capital territory (FCT) high court issued an order restraining Abure from parading himself as the LP’s national chairman.

Following the order, Lamidi Apapa, deputy national chairman of the LP (south), declared himself the leader of the party.

Shortly after, Abure alleged that thugs aided by police officers invaded the party’s secretariat.

Leading the officials on Monday, Joe Ajaero, NLC president, said the congress would resist the “illegal” declaration by anybody of being the national chairman.

“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 party to decide the next line of action,” Ajaero said.

“For anybody to illegally declare himself either as chairman, secretary or anything, we urge all workers anywhere in the country, where you see such people, arrest them and bring them to us.

“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 are crippling 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.”

The NLC president said the officials decided to visit the national secretariat after getting information that “there are some rodents trying to move into our house and we have come with some insecticide to fumigate the house from any rodents that are illegally trying to enter our property”.

“So that is why we are here, incidentally, we didn’t see any rodents but we will comb around and see whether there are any. The LP is a child of circumstances. It began when we lost almost all confidence in the existing political parties. And we felt that the LP will be the ideal political party that will represent our ideological persuasions,” he said.

“Nobody can come from the blues and declare himself as the chairman or secretary of our party without our consent.

“It is not done. Such people, if they attempt to come here next time, all their property, all their houses, their residential houses we will occupy it wherever it is located. Then they will know that all that they have was given to them by Labour.”