Labour Party: Has the goodwill been squandered?

The scenes at the Labour Party (LP) today defy definition; it’s safer perhaps, to talk in terms of confusion and directionlessness -where a political party has three parallel leadership and still counting -all claiming legitimacy. One leadership with a governor (Abia State’s Alex Otti) in tow, 2023 presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, some senators, and several House of Representatives/State Houses of Assembly lawmakers, among others as members, is led by the National Caretaker Committee (NCC) chaired by former finance minister, Esther Nenadi Usman.

In its grip, like a vice at the Utako national secretariat in Abuja, is the National Working Committee (NWC) led by the National Chairman, Mr Julius Abure. He says he has state chairmen and secretaries of the party with him and firmly controls the structures of the LP across the Federation. One group led by Alhaji Bahiru Lamidi Apapa, who brands himself as the “most senior deputy national chairman of the party”, also sprang into the radar of public discuss last week amidst the legitimacy tussles between the Nenadi Usman-led NCC and the Abure-led NWC. Aside from the above, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), a key stakeholder of the LP, has also not rested on its bid to repossess the party.

To underscore the messy state of affairs in the LP, both the Abure-led NWC and the Nenadi Usman-led NCC have held their separate National Executive Council (NEC) meetings, each churning out resolutions, passing of vote of confidence in selves and mapping out plans for the upcoming Anambra State governorship poll in November and the 2027 general elections. On its part, the Apapa camp has fixed its own NEC meeting for April 14. Laying his claim to legitimacy, Apapa had told reporters in Abuja of his intentions, saying, “Following the decision of the Supreme Court on setting aside all judgements that recognise the leadership of Julius Abure as National Chairman, I, ALH BASHIRU LAMIDI APAPA, the most senior deputy national, and in consonance with our party constitution, Article 14 2(a)(b), hereby take over the running of the affairs of our great party with effect from today, Wednesday, the 9th day of April 2025, in an acting capacity, and Alh Farouk Umar Ibrahim as National Secretary,” he stated. The same April 9 that he spoke to the media was the same day the Nenadi Usman-led NCC held its NEC meeting at the Transcorps Hotel in Abuja, while the Abure-led NWC had met earlier on April 7, also in Abuja.

In the build-up to the 2023 polls, the LP rose steadily from a position of near-nothingness to give the more formidable All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) a run for their money; ganaring massive support, especially from among the youth population and many voters dreaming of a total reengineering of the country’s political landscape. The entry into the presidential race on the ticket of the party by former Anambra State Governor, Mr Peter Obi, strengthened the LP’s hopes, more especially because of Obi’s campaign strategies of highlighting the years of decay under the PDP and the APC, which resonated well with the followers.

Although the LP was derided as the “party without structures,” every inch along the way, saw the LP gathering momentum, as Obi, the Obidients Movement and others registered presence in the 36 states and the FCT. The party almost totally captured the South-East in particular. Emboldened by the success and the sudden trepidation exhibited by the APC and the PDP, the LP saw itself as the likely winner of the presidential race that lined up former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, former Lagos State Governor, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, ex-Kano State Governor, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso, and a host of others.

The LP didn’t win;  as officially declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu of the APC won by polling 8,794,726 votes, while Abubakar was second with 6,984,520. Obi was third with 6,101,533 votes. In terms of percentages, Tinubu got  39 percent of the votes, Abubakar secured 29 percent, while Obi recorded 25 percent of the 93million voters captured as participants. This was clearly an indication of the tightness of the race among the three frontrunners.

Across board, the party, after the conclusion of all electoral processes, including litigation, produced one governor; eight senators (now five); 35 members of the House of Representatives (now 29), many state legislators, councillors, etc. It didn’t escape the notice of Nigerians that a ‘structureless’ party like the LP posted such a performance, firmly estabshing it as a future party of choice for voters and the one that would along with the PDP, galvanise opposition politics ahead of the next elections as Obi and the party gained widespread popularity.

How did the cookie crumble?

Regrettably, the LP didn’t appear to be able to manage its success at the polls; it emerged one phase of a crisis to another, mainly about leadership and control.  There were several, but the most recent is the tussle between the Nenadi Usman-led NCC and the Abure-led NWC. On November 4, 2024, at a meeting convened in Umuahia, party stakeholders, according to Otti, in a bid to reposition the LP for the task ahead, named a 16-member NCC headed by Nenadi Usman and given the mandate of conducting congresses up a national convention where new leaders would emerge.

This would also imply an end to the Abure-led NWC, whose tenure was considered to have lapsed. But, Abure would not buy into this, as he insisted that his tenure was intact, and still subsists. In trying to justify his hold on the party, Abure traced how his current tenure came about. He stated, “The Labour Party held a valid National Convention in 2019, whose tenure was constitutionally due to end in June 2023. In response to the extraordinary demands of the 2023 general elections, our NEC, meeting in Asaba in April of that year, authorised a one-year extension, pushing the end of tenure to June 9, 2024. “In line with this resolution and the constitution of our party, a fresh National Convention was duly convened and held on March 27, 2024, in Nnewi, Anambra State. All procedures relating to that Convention were properly executed, and multiple court rulings have validated the legitimacy of the convention.”

This argument didn’t make any impact on the Nenadi Usman NCC, which has consistently explained that Abure has no reason to remain a leader of the LP, having exhausted all claims to the authority of the party. The Abia governor, Otti, revealed efforts made to woo Abure to abandon his path of fight, saying that at a point, the position of Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT) was offered to him. In the alternative, he was advised to wait and re-contest the seat of national chairman again after the completion of the rebuilding process and congresses. He added: “I sat with Abure last year and offered him BoT chairman”,  the governor stated, adding, “I told him that if I were you, I would not want you to lead people who don’t want you to lead them.”

Otti said Abure, who refused to agree to any of the proposals put before him, later opted to go the courts. In the process, he secured a favourable judgment from the Court of Appeal, which recognised Abure as the national chairman of the LP. The Nenadi Usman-led NCC, not satisfied with the decision of the court of appeal, proceeded to the Supreme Court. The apex court, in its judgment delivered on April 4, declared that matters relating to the leadership of political parties were not for the courts to dabble into but must be settled through their internal mechanisms. The court also stated that the decision of the appeal court recognising Abure as the national chairman was null and void.

The apex court went ahead to “admonish political parties” to always conduct their affairs in line with the provisions of their constitutions. This judgment, rather than resolve the leadership crisis, has merely escalated it, as both the two leading camps are interpreting it to mean that it conveyed legitimacy on them, hence the buzz the LP created in the public space in the last few days since the judgment was delivered.

In addition to the separate NEC meetings they had held already, each side is calling on the other to join it in rebuilding the party. This is besides the consistent warnings issued by the Abure-led NWC to discipline those in the camp of the NCC if they continue to ignore Abure’s leadership. As if that isn’t enough, Lamidi Apapa entered the fray too, further compounding the confusion in the LP.

While the Nenadi Usman-led NCC argues that the judgment is so simple, even for the unlearned to understand, Abure would have none of this. He claims that the judgment actually ‘’vindicates” his NWC, which had all the while acted in line with the party’s constitution in every step taken till date. Abure notes,

What experts, outsiders are saying

All of a sudden, the LP’s goodwill seems to have been squandered. Rather than rebuild, expand to give bite to the opposition or become that reliable alternative to the ruling APC, the party’s fortunes are fading fast. As of last count, at least five members of the House of Representatives had ported from the platform. There have been many defections by major players since 2023, owing in part to the leadership crisis. Some opinions suggest that the disintegration the LP may be the handiwork of hired hands by the major parties, including the APC and the PDP to unsettle Peter Obi in particular. “One may want to say, yes, hired hands have infiltrated the ranks. From my observation, the aim is to ensure that the party remains in crises, to make it unattractive for serious following”, a Political Scientist, Dr. Garho Martins, told this writer.

A political analyst, Chief Justus Akile, though sharing the same views as Dr Martins’, calls for “compromises” among the major camps as the most likely solution to the dispute. He explained: “At the stage the Labour Party is now, the actors will need to agree to sit down and reach comprises. It has to be give and take. Greed must be jettisoned at this stage to make way for sacrifices. That is the only way to prove that there no fifth columnists in the whole of this drama. What the court has done is to give what I call a political judgment while throwing the party open to the members to resolve their problems. To get to a resolution of the crisis, one side can’t achieve it alone.”

Way forward

The days ahead are interesting times for the LP, once a moving force, but now a shadow of its old self. It must get its acts together quickly and re-launch itself into the consciousness of more Nigerian votes if it stands any chance against the APC or PDP in 2027. A nearby test will be the November governorship poll in Anambra state, coming soon. This is Peter Obi’s state, where he served as governor for eight years. It should worry the LP if it’s unable to make a good impression at the election and many more off-cycle elections lined up to serve as the KPI for the 2027 general polls.