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STATEMENT FROM THE LABOUR PARTY
Labour Party warns Falana to stop intimidating INEC, terrorizing party members
… Urge him to respect judicial interpretation on party leaderships
The attention of the leadership of the Labour Party has been drawn to a statement purportedly written and disseminated by Chief Femi Falana and his chambers for the purpose of disparaging our organization and which we think was done deliberately to assassinate the party’s hard earned image and character.
Ordinarily, we would have ignored the ill motivated, provocative and fallacious letter addressed to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, just like we have been doing with a lot of media hogwash and distractions from one disgruntled group, however this kind of statement is capable of misleading people, reason we need to make this clarifications.
The Falana Chambers had recently written to the INEC warning the Commission against recognising Julius Abure as the National Chairman of the Labour Party. It also warned some of our respectable leaders and political office holders to stay away from the Labour Party ahead of the 2027 general election. The legal firm also threatened INEC with a contempt proceedings if it fails to do its illegal bidding.
We think that Mr Falana is deploying an unconventional tactics of intimidation against the INEC in attempt to achieve what it was unable to achieve in the last decade through unsuccessful attempts in the courts.
The Nigeria constitution and the electoral law are clear as to the position of law concerning the independence and ownership of a political party. Political parties are owned by Nigerians and therefore can not be owned by another organisation. We find it absurd to see Falana and his group labouring to give different interpretation to the laws of the land.
Several courts, including an Appeal Courts have given judgement on the position and the leadership of the Labour Party, and they are incontrovertible. The courts have also permitted the INEC to recognize Abure and its executive. Abure is also under the protection of the courts to administer the Labour Party and by extension, conduct congresses and convention, tasks that the present leadership has been diligently embarking in line with the provisions of the party constitution.
It amuses the party leadership to see Falana with his rich legal experience, continue to latch on the so called 2018 Consent Judgement and the 2022 agreement which are the only empirical evidence he is using to attempt to intimidate INEC.
A perusal of the agreement and the judgement, even taking it from their face value, shows clearly that the Abure leadership has sufficiently abided by them. These include the conduct of the convention and inclusion of the representatives of the NLC in the leadership of the party. It will interest you to know that as a result of the agreement, two Deputy National Chairmen and one Vice National Chairman of the party were occupied by the Labour group.
We also commenced the constitution and inauguration of the Board of Trustees as agreed only to find out that most of the names supplied by the NLC were either members and active participants with the other political parties in the last general election or non card carrying members of the Labour Party. These made the inauguration of the BoT, the conscience of the party practically impossible.
The last part of the agreement was to aggressively drive for membership. NLC leadership refused to encourage their members to register with the Labour Party. As a matter of fact, its national president, up till present is not a card carrying member of the LP. This is in spite of the fact the party under the leadership of Barrister Abure worked hard to improve the membership of the party as evident during the 2023 general election; and has continued to do same thereafter.
Besides, the court of Appeal has completely dealt with the 2018 Consent judgement. In fact, the former Deputy National Chairman of the Labour Callistus Okafor went to court and premised his case on that Consent Judgement against the party, and the Court of Appeal dealt with it sufficiently in favour of the Abure leadership.
We are therefore warning that the NLC and Mr. Falani should stop misleading the public. We used to hold the legal luminary in high esteem but this Labour Party matter is making him to lose his value. It is obvious that one stands to lose credibility when you chose to mislead people. Falana is a well respected personality and that is why the party has restrained itself from responding to all his shenanigans and unnecessary pressure on INEC against us. But since he has chosen to trade with his credibility because of the supposed peanut he is receiving, we will also meet him at the market square.
His efforts to constantly tar and assassinate the party’s image is quite unbecoming. And for him to be scaring willing Nigerians from pursuing their legitimate political interests through the platform of the Labour Party could amount to terrorism and we frown at that. We are afraid if he continues to progress in that trajectory, he may be construed to be a liar, manipulator and alarmist.
His plans to intimidate INEC will not work. He should go through the judicial process and not coaxing and wheedling government establishments into doing his bidding.
SIGN
Obiora Ifoh
National Publicity Secretary
Labour Party
17-07-2024
