The Labour Party has been thrown into fresh turmoil as the Nenadi Usman-led National Working Committee called for the arrest and prosecution of the party’s former National Chairman, Julius Abure, over an alleged invasion of its national secretariat in Abuja.
Addressing a press conference at the secretariat, the interim leadership accused Abure and his loyalists of storming the premises, threatening officials, and carting away sensitive materials.
The party alleged that properties and billboards bearing the image of Interim National Chairman Nenadi Usman were destroyed, while laptops and financial documents were carted away.
Usman said the party had petitioned the Inspector-General of Police, the Department of State Services, and other security agencies to take action.
She said, “We demand the immediate arrest and prosecution of Julius Abure and others for criminal invasion, contempt of court, impersonation, and threats to constitutional democracy in Nigeria. Nigeria is a constitutional democracy governed by laws, not a chaotic arena of impunity, terrorism, and brigandage as imagined by Mr Julius Abure and others.”
The interim national chairman added that the alleged operation by Abure’s supporters “lasted for over 30 minutes” and that they made away with “sensitive party documents, financial records, official registration materials, laptops, desktops, phones, and other critical assets.”
“This confirms a disturbing pattern of impunity and disregard for lawful authority. To confirm that they had carried out a criminal operation at the party’s national secretariat, they made posts on the night of the operation through various social media handles, practically indicting themselves. Their subsequent press statements issued from an undisclosed hideout are a gross misrepresentation of facts and continued impersonation in defiance of binding judicial pronouncements and INEC’s position as a regulator of political parties in Nigeria,” she stated.
However, Abure’s camp dismissed the allegations in a statement signed by the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh.
“The attention of the leadership of the Labour Party has been drawn to an unsigned press conference purportedly by one Nenadi Usman and her cohorts, which talked about the invasion of the Labour Party’s national headquarters as well as a case of forgery and so on. We need to state very clearly that the tone of the press conference was not only fallacious and laughable but one that must be dismissed with a wave of the hand,” the statement read.
The faction alleged that some persons scaled the fence of the secretariat around 1 a.m. on February 10 and pulled down the party’s billboard before erecting Usman’s own. Ifoh questioned how Usman gained access to the offices, insisting that there was no formal handover of the secretariat.
Credit: The Punch
