Joe Ajaero, the president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), has passed a vote of confidence on Julius Abure, insisting that he remains the national chairman of the party.
The party has been engrossed in a leadership tussle between the embattled national chairman, Abure, and Lamidi Apapa, the suspended deputy national chairman.
Ajaero, who appeared as a guest on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Tuesday, gave this word of support and clarification about the true situation of things at the party, insisting again that Abure and not Apapa is the chairman of the party.
“Well, Julius Abure remains the national chairman of the Labour Party,” Ajaero said. “Nobody has conducted any convention. There has been no NEC meeting called that NLC as trustees have attended where any officer has been removed—none.”
Read also: Barrister Julius Abure remains the National Chairman says Labour Party
The Labour leader added that even with the court judgement barring Abure from parading himself as chairman, a convocation for its leaders to appoint new executives will be carried out on June 27.
He voiced his displeasure over the actions of Apapa, insisting that it is unacceptable for anyone to declare himself national chairman without the official recognition of the executives of the party, the NLC, and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
“So any distraction for people to overstay in office or to perpetuate themselves in office is not acceptable to us. That is the position as of today,” he said. “You can’t just wake up and say you have removed leaders; it is not acceptable to us.”
On the leadership claim of the party by Lamidi Apapa and Calistus Ojiafor, he accused the media of promoting this false narrative and urged the media to stop this agenda.
“The media should stop creating crises for us,” he said. “Lamidi Apapa was a deputy; now, assuming the court removes Abure as chairman, what happens conventionally is for a NEC meeting of the Labour Party to meet, and then they would choose who stays in acting capacity until a substantive chairman is appointed. Nobody goes to a Labour office and breaks the windows and doors and declares himself winner; that does not happen in any organisation.
“It is unacceptable; the person can’t even present himself to us. Is that how other organisations behave?” he asked.
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