The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has rejected the judgement delivered by Justice Emeka Nwite of the Abuja Federal High Court, ordering the Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC) to grant embattled National Chairman of the party, Mr. Julius Abure, access to the INEC training portal.
It would be recalled that INEC, on two occasions, has denied Mr. Abure access to the quarterly meeting of INEC with the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), thereby leaving the Labour Party (LP’s) seat vacant.
In a statement on Thursday (today, October 17), jointly signed by the Acting Chairman of the NLC political commission Professor Theophilus Ndubuaku, and the Secretary Mr. Chris Uyot, the NLC indicated that the judgment delivered on Tuesday, 8th October 2024, by Justice Emeka Nwite of the Federal High Court came as a surprise to millions of democracy-loving Nigerians and, indeed persons of conscience and consciousness all over the world.
The NLC Political Commission said it views the judgments as another act of desperation and subterfuge by Mr. Julius Abure and his motley of hangers-on and merchants who have no other job than to leech and parasitize the goodwill of the Labour Party (LP) in furtherance of their pecuniary interest.
Accusing Abure of adopting “a mischievous and clandestine approach to the judiciary”, the NLC said the embattled LP National Chairman “and his ilk, who are certainly in the employ of entrenched interests bent on sabotaging and destabilizing the Labour Party ahead of the 2027 general election, have continued to pull the wool over the eyes of our justice system.”
“We perceive Justice Omotosho’s judgment and now Justice Emeka Nwite’s judgment that appears to give some veneer of legitimacy to the expired leadership of Mr. Julius Abure by venerating the widely vilified Nnewi Convention of the Labour Party (LP) illegally conducted by Mr. Abure, in violation of extant court judgment on provisions of the Labour Party Constitution and INEC supervised terms of settlement, as a gross miscarriage of justice,” the statement by the Ndubuaku and Ufot said.
“Our position is firm on legal and moral grounds. It is queer that the Nigeria Labour Congress,(NLC) which, together with the Trade Union Congress,(TUC) are the only statutory bodies recognized in the Labour Party Constitution, were not joined as parties to the two court processes filed by Mr. Abure.
“It would be recalled that Justice Gabriel Kolawole, in March 2018, delivered a consent judgment, a major albatross of Abure’s pretensions to Labour Party leadership, that the NLC is the owner and promoter of the Labour Party.
“The non-representation of the NLC in a court case on Labour Party leadership, which the NLC has been contesting, qualifies as a prime travesty of justice. This deliberate exclusion is not happenstance but furtherance of mischievous intention by Mr. Abure to hide vital material facts and evidence from our learned judges in furtherance of the evasive style of backwaters and mercantile politics which he has epitomized since his unfortunate and tragic usurpation of the leadership of the Labour Party.
“It is a fact well-known by members of the Labour Party and discerning Nigerians that the tenure of Abure and his cohorts in the National Working Committee (NWC) has conclusively come to an end.
“The events that shaped the expiration of the tenure of Mr. Julius Abure and whatever remained of his National Working Committee (NWC) is a long albeit straightforward linkage of several severe violations of the constitution of the Labour Party, extant court judgment agreements signed between Mr. Julius Abure and the NLC cum members of the Labour Party Board of Trustees as supervised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in April 2022.
“Following several infractions on the provisions of the Labour Party Constitution especially on leadership succession in the party, the Nigeria Labour Congress took the leadership of the Labour Party under Alhaji A.A. Salaam to court.
“The outcome of that process was a Consent Judgment delivered by Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court on March 20, 2018, that ordered the conduct of an inclusive National Convention of the Labour Party with the active participation of all the parties to the suit.
“The Akwanga Convention of the Labour Party that purportedly gave Mr. A.A. Salaam a second term, violated the consent judgment. Following the demise of Mr. Salaam in 2021, Mr. Julius Abure, then Acting National Secretary of the Labour Party, strangely emerged as Chairman of the Labor Party violating yet again the Labour Party’s Constitution, which stipulates that a Deputy National Chairman steps in as Acting Chairman of the Party in case of the demise or resignation of the Chairman.
“The NLC challenged these violations in court, and the ensuing stalemate informed the intervention of the INEC which in April 2022 instituted an alternative mediation and arbitration process, which culminated in a Terms of Settlement that upheld Justice Gabriel Kolawole’s consent judgment and scheduled the conduct of the all-inclusive National Convention of the Labour Party in June 2023.
“This agreement was personally signed by Mr. Julius Abure and the National Secretary of the Labour Party with the President and General Secretary of the NLC also as signatories.
“It was against the background of the criminal violation of the Consent Judgement and INEC-mediated Terms of Settlement that Mr. Julius Abure conducted the charade he describes as a National Convention in Nnewi, which all the major stakeholders of the Labour Party and INEC have described as a nullity thereby occasioning a void in the leadership of the Labour Party.”
The NLC further stated also that it is on the premise of this void in leadership and following the efforts of all party stakeholders, both statutory and nominal, that the Interim Caretaker Committee of the Labour Party emerged, led by Senator Esther Nenadi Usman.
“The foregoing, therefore, provokes the following concerns:
1) “A fundamental philosophy in law is that you cannot build something on anything. Justices Omotosho and Nwite’s rulings appear to have impugned this basic philosophy of law. An existing judgment of the Federal High Court has already called for an inclusive National Convention of the Labour Party, which was violated by the exclusive nature of the purported Nnewi Convention of the Labour Party.
2)”Another fundamental philosophy in law is that of fair hearing. This means that you cannot decide on a matter in the absence of those whose interests would be fundamentally affected by the outcome of the court process. As already stated, neither the Nigeria Labour Congress nor the Trade Union Congress, which are the only statutory members of the Labour Party, were parties nor represented in the court hearings that culminated in Justice Omotosho and Nwite’s rulings. This is indeed a gross and grave miscarriage of justice.
3)”This judgment amounts to a political misnomer given the absurdity of imposing leadership on members of a political party who were not privy or contributors to the emergence of such a leadership. Given the exclusive nature of the Nnewi Convention in violation of the provisions of the Labour Party Constitution and the rejection of the outcome of the Nnewi Convention by the majority of Labour Party stakeholders and members, particularly statutory members and political office holders elected on the platform of the Labour Party, we ask “who elected Mr. Julius Abure and his so-called National Working Committee at the Nnewi Convention?”
4) “This naturally provokes another question:whose interest is the so-called leadership of Mr. Julius Abure serving?”
5) “The last concern signals the possibility of judicial activism in a political space.
“Relying on the foregoing, the NLC Political Commission supports the position of the Labour Party Interim National Caretaker Committee to challenge the recent judgments at the Appeal Court.
“While this is being pursued, we wish to urge INEC to keep respecting the provisions of our laws in respect of “status quo ante bellum”, until all legal options in this case are exhausted.
“INEC should continue to maintain its position on the non-recognition of Mr. Julius Abure’s claim to leadership while quickly granting full recognition to the Interim National Caretaker Committee of the Labour Party.
“We emphasize that the recognition of Senator Nenadi Usman’s Caretaker Committee will go a long way in checking the attempt by the rival political interests whose errand Mr. Abure and his hired hands are running to hide under the veil of “crisis in the Labour Party” to exclude the Labour Party from active participation in the electoral space in the run-up to the 2027 general election, especially the pending off-season elections.
“We urge millions of Labour Party members not to lose faith. Mr. Julius Abure and his mercantile crowd have continued to prove that they are errand boys and girls to a known political entity that does not align with the interests and persuasions of the Labour Party. In due time, his sponsors and the enemies of democracy in Nigeria would be fully unmasked.
“We assert that a million court judgments will not impose Mr. Abure on members of the Labour Party. We remain persuaded that the forces of evil pervading our country will not thrive perpetually. There is certainly a date in history for the truncation of the reign of evil and tyranny. The will of the people will always triumph!”
