The alleged plan by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to plunge the Labour Party (LP) into a leadership crisis and frustrate Peter Obi’s petition at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal challenging the declaration of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as president-elect was halted by the quick intervention of the LP National Executive Committee (NEC).
Recall that after a High Court in Abuja had restrained Julius Abure from parading himself as LP National Chairman, a party member, Lamidi Apapa, had declared himself acting Chairman.
But a meeting of the party’s NEC, also attended by the Independent National Electoral Commission, suspended Apapa and expelled National Publicity Secretary Arabambi Abayomi, while the suspended National Youth Leader, Anselm Eragbe, was recommended to the national convention for expulsion.
The NEC also extended the tenure of the Abure-led National Working Committee (NWC) by one year.
According to New Telegraph, the assumption of office by Apapa, who was Vice Chairman (South), as acting National Chairman was orchestrated to fractionalize the LP and scuttle the petition filed by Peter Obi.
The platform claimed that Apapa immediately started to execute the plan of his sponsors by lifting the suspension imposed on the former National Publicity Secretary, Arabambi Abayomi, and National Youth Leader Anselm Eragbe and readmitted them into the party.
Abayomi was alleged to have worked against Labour Party from producing candidates for Lagos and Ogun States but for the intervention of the party leadership, who engaged another lawyer to handle the appeal against the exclusion of the party’s candidates in the two states by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Throughout the period he acted as National Chairman, Apapa did not attempt to meet Peter Obi, investigations by the platform revealed.
Acting National Publicity Secretary of the party, Obiora Ifoh, said there was no need for an acting National Chairman because a court order stopped Abure’s suspension.
“They (Apapa group) have an agenda. Ladi IIiya is the Deputy National Chairman, seconded from the NLC (Nigeria Labour Congress). She is the one who is supposed to act in the absence of the Chairman.
“But we don’t have an acting Chairman because Abure has not been removed. He remains substantive Chairman because a court of competent jurisdiction, in Edo State, has stopped his removal,” Ifoh was quoted as saying by New Telegraph.
According to the publication, Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodinma, was also accused of involvement in the LP crisis.
Uzodinma, seeking a second term in office, is reportedly not comfortable with the wave LP is making in the South-East, and is working to weaken the party in Imo State.
