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By: Prince Kennedy Ahanotu
For a few weeks now, the Labour Party has been in the news. Unfortunately, this is coming after a largely impactful performance at the recent general election, where it overwhelmed the older and most established political parties like the All Progressives Congress and the People’s Democratic Party.
Before the campaigns, the Labour Party worked with a fixated aspiration, and that was to ensure that a new political order where Nigerians would take back their country from the marauding politicians is enthroned. Fortune smiled at the party the moment former governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi was nominated as the presidential candidate of the party. But as expected, political buccaneers surfaced from everywhere, seeking to reap where they did not sow.
The first crisis was when a former Deputy National Chairman Calistus Okafor whose tenure had long elapsed suddenly resurfaced and attempted to hijack the leadership, but that was resisted. The courts punctured all his antics and permanently shut his evil enterprises.
However, all hell was let loose when at the formation of the Labour Party’s Presidential Campaign Council, the name of the then National Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Arabambi didn’t appear as the head of media and Publicity of the PCC. That didn’t sit or sink well with him. All his efforts to force his way through were unsuccessful as his treacherous past manifested vividly and spoke against him. He then resorted to declaring war against the party and the leadership.
It would be plausible at this point to note here that the PCC members are populated by both party and non party members who were assembled based on their competence and track records of sacrificial services by the presidential candidate to help in the prosecution of the campaigns and of course the election. The candidate deserves the right to choose the team he wants to work with in the project.
To some people, campaign time is a time to make money and milk candidates of their resources. This might be the practice in the other parties but this is a Labour Party, populated by Obidient fateful; a party without structure, bereft of billionaire sponsors, no government patronage, in fact, it is known as a party that doesn’t and will not give ‘Shishi’. The only driving force was the organic structure populated by younger Nigeria driven by passion to rewrite the wrongs of the ageing leaders who mismanaged our Commonwealth.
For Abayomi Arabambi, money is the game and he was determined to sell his soul to achieve that dangerous appetite to enrich himself by whatever means. The only means is to initiate and sustain the crisis in the party by turning himself into a hireling and making himself available at a price to be purchased by desperate politicians.
Former National Publicity Secretary, who was one time, LP State Chairman in Ogun state, was given the assignment to supervise the party’s activities in some South West states, including Lagos and Osun alongside Akingbade Oyelekan and Lamidi Apapa. They were given the task to ensure that the party’s candidates for Senate and House of Representatives positions in both states are listed in INEC portal for the general elections in 2023, not knowing they were an agent of the APC.
Arabambi and Akingbade bungled the assignment and with the permission of the national leadership, they were asked to seek redress at the court, an assignment they purposely, deceitfully and poorly mismanaged alongside their compromised team, which resulted in the matter being dismissed by the Federal High Court and this development was willfully hidden from the party leadership for reasons only known to them. This poor performance was after Arabambi has collected millions of naira from the party in Lagos State into his personal bank accounts purportedly for “legal fees”and other ancillary expenses in respect of the matter.
Arabambi also refused to hand over the matter and the case file to the party’s trusted legal team when the demand was made of him by the national leadership of the party since Arabambi and his team did not make any effort to file an appeal against the judgement of the lower court in any appeal court of the land even as he was aware that the window for doing same was elapsing with obvious implications for the party and her candidates. Anybody could have a guess here as to why a self acclaimed “committed” labour party man will exhibit such behavior if not only to satisfy his paymasters at the detriment of the labour party.
At this juncture, it became too obvious that Arabambi and his cohorts were leading the party and her candidates to the point where the party will not be able to file in candidates for elective positions in Lagos state aside the presidency, a development which worked against the interest of the party and her presidential candidate. This action cost the party the opportunity to field legislative candidates in Lagos state. The party suspended him after a plethora of evidence of his treachery, deception and other anti party activities. One of his cronies, Akingbade, was at some time caught up with forgery, as discussed in the NWC, where he tendered an apology. So both Arabambi and Akingbade do not have the moral standing to speak against Barr Abure, our National Chairman.
The pictures of Arabambi where he led a group of discredited and renegade members of the labour party in Ogun state to repeatedly visit and endorse Governor Dapo Abiodun who is of APC in a contest where the party was also contesting have been trending in the social media. He worked with the APC governor all through the campaign and has been promised position in the new cabinet even after he had purportedly been handsomely rewarded in cash.
Now with the development after the presidential election, where our candidate is believed to have clearly won election but was robbed of victory, the APC leaders have reportedly reached out to him with mouth watering offers to sustain the bickering and ensure that court cases filed by our presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi suffer damages owing to this imaginary faction he’s bent on creating.
Events of last one week, particularly last thursday, have further exposed his wicked intentions. He deceived a few members of our National Working Committee members through his partner Akingbade, aided with thugs and protected by the men of Police Force to break into our party offices, chased away our staff, held an illegal meeting without notice on the NWC platform, even without forming quorum and attempted to wrestle power, citing an ex-parte order from an FCT High Court, and even with the awareness that an Edo High Court has already given a restraining order against them, their agents and cohorts in favour of our National Chairman, Juluis Abure, was the highest level of rascality. These actions have since been repudiated by the various organs of our party and by the public court. So far the status quo has been maintained, Abure remains our national chairman but we are distraught because these men have the mandate of their sponsors to continue to ensure maximum disruption and that unabated crisis ensue in the party.
Barr Julius Abure has taken the labour party to an enviable heights, and as a political party, we cherish his leadership. Whatever he does has always been for the larger interest of the party, but those pointing fingers at him are only doing so based on personal grounds.
However, we believe in the maxim that good will always triumph over evil. Nigerians have spoken loudly on February 25, and a million Arabambis with whatever gratification they may have received will never and can never kill the will of divinity over Nigeria.
Prince Kennedy Ahanotu
Ag. National Youth Leader
Labour Party
