Labour Party Crisis: Abia governor reacts to suspension, asks IGP to arrest Abure

Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has condemned his alleged suspension from the Labour Party (LP) and asked the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, to arrest the disputed National Chairman of the party, Julius Abure.

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In a statement on Wednesday evening by his media aide, Ferdinand Ekeoma, Mr Otti accused Mr Abure of impersonation.

Mr Otti was elected governor of Abia State during the 2023 general election under the LP platform.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that earlier on Wednesday, a faction of the LP led by Mr Abure announced the suspension of Mr Otti from the party over alleged anti-party activities.

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Apart from the Abia governor, the faction also suspended five other prominent members of the party, including a serving senator and two House of Representatives members.

‘You’re no longer our national chairperson,’ Otti kicks

Reacting, Mr Otti argued that Mr Abure did not have the power to suspend him and five others from the party because he was no longer the LP’s national chairperson.

The governor said Mr Abure had been sacked as the LP’s national chairperson by the Supreme Court in April.

He said his suspension from the party announced by Mr Abure and his cohorts was not only a joke taken too far, but “an affront on democracy.”

“For the record, the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has rightly and unambiguously stated that Julius Abure is no longer the National Chairman of the Labour Party.

“The judgement which is in agreement with the Constitution of the Labour Party, and formed the basis for the setting up of the Senator Nenadi Usman-led National Caretaker Committee stripped Abure of every authority to parade himself as the National Chairman of the Labour Party,” he said.

Mr Otti said Mr Abure only acted “smart by half” by announcing the suspension of the party members hours after he was summoned by a committee to face allegations of gross misconduct on financial misappropriation,impersonation and anti party activities against him.

“We enjoin Nigerians to disregard Abure’s laughable statement and continue to see him and his co-conspirators as a group of clowns in desperate search of a crown they do not deserve,” he said.

“We call on the Inspector General of Police to quickly arrest Mr Abure for impersonation, while INEC should ensure full implementation of the Supreme Court judgement as a way of preserving the integrity of the Supreme Court and protecting our democracy,” the governor added.

Background

The LP has been battling an intense leadership crisis, which has split the party into two factions.

While Mr Abure leads one of the factions, Peter Obi and Mr Otti belong to another faction of the LP.

The LP’s National Executive Committee had sacked the Abure-led executive in September last year and appointed Ms Usman, a former minister of finance and ex-senator representing Kaduna South, to lead a 29-member caretaker committee and facilitate the election of a new party leadership within 90 days.

But weeks later, the Court of Appeal in Abuja recognised Mr Abure as the national chairperson of the LP.

However, the Supreme Court, on 4 April, set aside the judgement of the lower court.

A five-member panel of the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Court of Appeal lacked jurisdiction to have affirmed Mr Abure as chairperson of the LP since the substance of the case was about the party’s leadership.

It held that the issue of leadership was an internal affair of a party over which courts lacked jurisdiction.

The court upheld the appeal filed against the judgement by Mrs Usman.

The Supreme Court held that Ms Usman’s appeal was meritorious, as it also dismissed the cross-appeal filed by the Mr Abure-led faction of the LP for lacking merit.

But the Abure-led faction of the LP argued the Supreme Court did not sack Mr Abure and other executives of the party.

The National Publicity Secretary of the LP, Obiora Ifoh, claimed that the Supreme Court’s position was that the matter was purely an internal affair of the party, insisting that the court did not set aside the Court of Appeal judgement of 13 November 2024, which affirmed Mr Abure as the national chairperson of the party.