LP Faction May Dump Obi/Datti
Court to Rule on Leadership Tussle May 12
Infighting May Hurt Suit Challenging Tinubu’s Victory
Was it a show of their new found power or a way to take the political party mainstream politically that the leaders of the Chief Lamidi Apapa-led faction of the Labour Party, LP, flew in an XE business jet to Bauchi for their first National Executive Council meeting last Wednesday?
The party leaders, THEWILL learnt, were bent on having the meeting that day, but there was no scheduled flight to Bauchi. So they chose to charter a jet. Labour Party?
“What is wrong with that?” The National Publicity Secretary of the faction, Adebayo Arabambi, fired back at THEWILL on Friday when asked to confirm the allegation that sponsors of the crisis in the party are financing his faction.
However, Arabambi stated that if the party chieftains could travel by private jets during electioneering, why should anyone raise eyebrows now that the staff of the party had to fly in a jet to the party’s National Executive Council meeting?
“The same sponsors that supported the party are still sponsoring the party,” he said, adding, ”faction or no faction.”
What Arabambi could not say, or refused to disclose for obvious reasons, about the source of revenue for his faction, however, is that the faction appears to have fallen on good fortune, which has given them the strength to stand their ground in the lingering crisis rocking the party, courtesy of a Benin High Court ruling that restrained the party’s National Chairman, Julius Abure, from acting.
The Abure-led faction still controls a comparatively heavier war chest through the conduct of the governorship primary for off-season polls in the three states of Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa, whose elections are coming up in November 2023.
For as high as N15 million as fees for governorship nomination forms, the faction must have raked in good money from politician who want to burnished their ambition on the altar of a brand new Labour Party whose stock has risen beyond expectation, following the stellar performance of presidential candidate Peter Obi in the February 25, 2023 presidential poll.
With this strength therefore, the Apapa faction appears ready to engage the Abure group in a long- drawn conflict, even after the upcoming May 19, 2023 Abuja Federal High Court ruling on the locus of each faction.
POINT OF NO RETURN?
While the public face of the crisis hangs on alleged mismanagement, financial recklessness and forgery carried out under Abure’s leadership, there is a creeping sense of power play that may reach a climax sooner than expected and keep the factions further apart.
Apart from consolidating its power through constituting a new NEC in Bauchi last Wednesday, the Apapa faction appears to be wary of the stand of Obi’s position on the brewing crisis.
For now, Obi is the bridge linking both groups. Despite its aggression towards Abure and his executive, the Apapa faction maintains its support for Obi and the party’s current petition at the Supreme Court.
At the Bauchi meeting where the Apapa faction announced a new executive and the suspension of four members of the Abure-led Exco, namely Umar Farouk, National Secretary, Clement Ojukwu, National Organising secretary, National Treasurer Olushi Opara, the presidential candidate, Obi, his Vice- Presidential candidate, Datti Ahmed and elected members of the party were pardoned, “because they attended the illegal Asaba NEC meeting in error.”
The Abure faction had earlier suspended Apapa and his group at last month’s Asaba NEC meeting together with the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, leadership.
Yet, there is a meeting ground between both factions: The candidacy of Obi and the pending suit filed by the party and its presidential candidate at the Supreme Court.
Sources say that since the lingering crisis blew into the open immediately after the March 23, 2023 governorship poll , the uniting factor provided by the party’s presidential candidate, which both factions publicly acknowledge, appear to be the new source of renewed hostility.
According to sources, following pressure on him to save the party, Abure had offered his willingness to resign but Obi was said to have rejected the move.
The rejection is said to be based on the need to maintain the winning team in view of the pending petition before the Supreme Court coming up for hearing on Monday 9, 2023.
Obi’s recent statement that he had never met Apapa before is said to have infuriated the factional leaders making them harden their stance, even though publicly acknowledging his importance and relevance to the current survival of the party.
The faction is said to have been alarmed by the extent to which Obi continues to stick with Abure, especially with the handling of the recent crisis of the party in Imo State where Obi agreed to act as Steering Committee Chairman to oversee the conduct of the party primary in the state after Abure had dissolved the state executive.
Moreover, there is a growing suspicion in the party that the party’s petition at the tribunal may crumble like a pack of cards. According to one of the aggrieved leaders, “the petition looked skewed in favour of certain interests and deliberately so as to make it a non-starter when the proceeding begins. The PDP is excluded from the petition, while the main target is APC. How can three main parties contest election and only the results of one of them is in contention? Are you not indirectly saying that the results of the excluded party in the suit are genuine?”
When the owners of the Labour Party, the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC, threw its weight behind the Abure faction, the Apapa faction decided to consolidate their position by formalising their faction.
“I think the NLC ran against the law by supporting the Abure faction during their meeting in Asaba. That was why we conducted our NEC to give Apapa the powers,” said Arabambi. “We do not want to toe the path of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and All Progressives Congress, APC, currently steep in crisis by allowing impunity to reign in our party.”
The NLC, THEWILL recalls, did not manage its ownership of the party well. At a point in the past when a leadership supremacy battle raged in the party, a court ruling directed the union to hold a congress to reconcile the factions. The NLC, under the leadership of the immediate past President, Ayuba Wabba, failed to do so. The factions have since mutated under different guises with their participation in politics further driving a wedge among the warring groups.
Attempts to get the NLC’s reaction failed as the President, Mr Joe Ajaero, did not pick calls to his phone. There is however a strong, though unsubstantiated feeling in both the NLC and the Abure faction that the Apapa faction is a tool in the hands of agents of destabilisation, particularly as the election petition trial date draws near. Arabambi denies this, saying that those who made the allegation have to prove it. He also said it was false that that the faction tried to withdraw the party’s suit at the presidential election tribunal.
Abure did not answer his mobile phone when THEWILL contacted him.
However, the Chief spokesperson of the LP Presidential Campaign Council, Tanko Yinusa, said the pending suit at the Federal High Court, Abuja, will determine the real leaders of the Labour Party on May 12. He added that the Apapa faction lacks the locus standi and therefore, it is on a wild goose chase for relevance.
“They have no locus standi in the party, administrative or political. Firstly, article 14 of the party is clear on the procedure to remove a National Chairman. You need to call a NEC to do so. Uma Farouk, the National Secretary, is in a position to call a NEC meeting. The Apapa faction has no locus standi to cast aspersions. Whatever allegations or accusations they make cannot stand to reason. Two court rulings have so far been made on Abure. The Benin High Court stopped him but the Abuja court ruling exempted him. Anyway, the matter would be dealt with at the Federal High Court in Abuja on May 12, 2023, ” Yinusa told THEWILL.
When asked if the sustained crisis within the party would not contribute to weakening it and spoil its chances at the Election Petition Tribunal, he said, calmly, “Peter Obi and Labour Party are the plaintiffs. In case there is no Labour Party, Peter Obi will carry on with the case.”
NO HOPE FOR RECONCILIATION
The Apapa faction says it is looking ahead, towards the 2027 election, meaning that barring a court judgement against it, it is not ready for any dialogue to resolve the crisis.
Arabambi said the case of fraud allegedly committed by the Abure faction is such that it would have to go up in the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, for restitution. On the other hand, he said Abure alongside Farouk, Ojukwu and Opara must resign their positions after appearing before the Apapa led faction to answer allegations against them.
“He who must come to equity must do so with clean hands. We want to build a party Nigerians would be proud of unlike with the PDP and APC,“ he said, adding, “we are already looking ahead to the 2027 elections.
“Remember that it is the party that is in court contesting the outcome of the polls with Obi and not Abure.”
Yinusa laughed it off when asked about the imminent fall of LP because of the lingering crisis.
“The case will be decided on May 12 by the Federal High Court in Abuja. I am sure everything will end on that day because the Apapa faction has no locus standi and they know it,” he said.
Amos Esele is the Acting Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.
