The National Youth Leader of the Labour Party (LP), Kennedy Ahanotu, has faulted the appointment of a new interim leadership committee led by Senator Nenadi Usman as unconstitutional and illegal, insisting that the party’s leadership remains under Julius Abure.
Ahanotu, a loyalist of the Abure-led camp made the statement during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday.
He said “Our press statement is everywhere, and I am here to say that what they did is totally illegal and unacceptable by law. Let them show the portion of the Labour Party constitution or the Electoral Act that allows for the creation of an interim national working committee. There is none,”
Ahanotu further noted that this was not the first attempt to unseat Abure through alternate structures, labelling it a third failed attempt under a different name.
“They previously called it a National Transition Committee, and it failed. They called it a National Caretaker Committee, and that failed too. Now, this is the third time they are coming with an acronym — Interim National Working Committee. It is nowhere to be found in our documents.”
Weighing on Governor Alex Otti’s role in presiding over the NEC meeting, Ahanotu questioned the appropriateness of a sitting governor chairing national party meetings.
“How come that a governor elected under the platform of the party, who should have acted as an umbrella for everyone, took sides and is now chairing NEC meetings?” he queried.
“Can he chair the state executive council in Abia and also chair the Labour Party’s NEC? It’s wrong. No matter how big some of them are, what is wrong is wrong. Alex Otti is serving a suspension.”
Speaking on the validity of such NEC meetings, Ahanotu insisted that any meeting without statutory members is null and void, regardless of who convenes it.
However, Ahanotu dismissed the entire process as a violation of both the Labour Party’s constitution and the Electoral Act.
His remarks come hours after the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), chaired by Abia State Governor Alex Otti, announced Usman as the Interim National Chairman and Senator Darlington Nwokocha as Interim National Secretary, among others, during a meeting held in Abuja.
