April 09, (THEWILL) – When the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, took to his twitter handle last Wednesday to say that he was being pressured to leave the country amid the Federal Government’s accusation of treasonable and inciting statements, it was left to the imagination to wonder who were those mounting the pressure.
For the Chief Spokesperson of the party, Tanko Yinusa, the pressure is real. Family members and friends, associates and a very important person who feared for the safety of the Anambra former governor were behind the pressure.
“And it is borne out of a background: The FGs accusation of treason against him and his deputy, Datti Baba Ahmed, the doctored audio conversation with Bishop David Oyedepo designed to smear him are being used to make the party abandon the court cases to reclaim our mandate,” Yinusa told THEWILL on Friday.
“We know the hand of Esau when we see one. He is not leaving the country. Now, they want to remove the National Chairman of the party through frivolous court cases. It is only the National Working Committee of the party that can remove the Chairman. We will see the end of the post-election court case to reclaim our mandate legally.”
All through the weekend, the internal crisis within the party persisted, reaching a head with the emergence of a faction, which formed an executive committee on the strength of an Abuja High Court through an exparte motion removing the National Chairman of the party, Julius Abure, for alleged forgery, embezzlement, perjury and anti-party activities.
The four appointed officers in acting capacities are National Vice Chairman, (South) Alhaji Lamidi Apapa as Acting National Chairman; Alhaji Salek Lawan, as Acting National Secretary; Comrade Reuben Favour, Acting Organising Secretary and Acting National Treasurer, Rowland Daramola.
The new NCW members immediately went about reversing the suspension of two members of the NCW, namely Comrade Arabambi Abayomi, National Publicity Secretary and Comrade Eragbe Anslem, National Youth Leader. State Executive council members who were suspended were reinstated in Ogun, Rivers and Gombe.
Speaking for the new order in LP, Arabambi Abayomi told THEWILL that the party’s crisis is self-inflicted and lays the problem on the shoulders of Abure, whom he accused of forgery and perjury and fraud.
“The fraud and forgeries were perpetrated during the conduct of primary for National Assembly members and governorship candidates for the party. Money was collected from those whose names were substituted with names of candidates submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. We have been pursuing the cases in court and when the one in FCT High Court sailed through, we asked for the copy of the judgement which the police used to issue a warrant of arrest on the National Chairman.”
With the Abure-led NCW denouncing the FCT Abuja court judgement, arguing that a court of competent jurisdiction has also upheld his powers as national chairman of the LP, the leadership crisis has further polarised the party.
But Abure’s NCW had needed help thrown its way when the owners of the party, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, threw their weight behind him.
Rising from a meeting on Friday, the national leaders, who expressed alarm at the decision of Justice Hamza Muazu of the High Court in FCT to suspend the Abure-led executive committee, the NLC leadership said, “We view the decapitation of the leadership of the party with great suspicion, which cannot be far from the intent to weaken the party from within or distract it from its fight to reclaim its victories at the polls.”
It declared the recognition of the Julius Abure-led team and urged the court to “review its decision forthwith.”
UNRESOLVED ISSUES
The issue of treason, following Datti Ahmed’s interview with Channels TV in which he stated that President Muhammadu Buhari and Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola, must not swear in the President-elect on May 29 until the post-election cases in court had been adjudicated upon and the alleged religious baiting contained in the leaked audio between Obi and Bishop David Oyedepo of the Living Faith Church Worldwide, aka Winners Church, is said to be baseless in intent, examined by the expert in legal matters.
On Tuesday, March 4, 2023, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, in far-away United States during an official duty, accused LP’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi and his running mate Datti Baba-Ahmed, of treason, saying they risked being prosecuted for making inciting statements over the outcome of the 2023 general election.
Reacting swiftly, Obi took to his twitter handle to debunk the claim and through the Presidential Campaign Council, PCC, he stated that that the “APC was involved in a covert plot in collaboration with some security agents to frame him for treason, including the circulation of a fake doctored audio and a pressure on me to leave the country.”
Taking a dispassionate look at the charges of treason and the sacking of the party’s exco, Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, at the weekend, said that Obi and Datti’s comments failed the treason test charges being bandied by the government.
According to him, Obi/Datti have not violated the clear and unambiguous Section 37 of the Criminal Code, on treason.
“Section 37(1) of the Criminal Code Act, provides that, “Any person who levies war against the state in order to intimidate or overawe the President or the Governor of a State, is guilty of treason and liable to the punishment of death.”
It is all about politics, because, according to him, “Obi and Datti have approached the court to challenge the results of the presidential election of the Constitution in line with the provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral Act.”
Falana also frowned at the ex parte orders given by the High Court in Abuja, describing it as illegal and a violation of the rights of affected NEC members of the party.
He said, “I have always opposed the removal of public officials and political party leaders via ex parte orders because it is illegal. It constitutes a gross abuse of the fundamental right to fair hearing, which is constitutionally guaranteed. It is a trite law that elected persons and appointees cannot be removed from office without being afforded the opportunity to react to allegations made against them. To that extent, removal of political leaders through ex parte orders cannot be justified in law.
“In Eperokun v. University of Lagos (1986) 4 NWLR (PT.34. 162, it was held that “constitutionally entrenched positions, particularly those safeguarding individual rights, should not, save in a fascist system, be lightly trampled upon. An appointee should not have the spectre of misconduct hanging over his head without being given an opportunity of clearing his name.”
CRISIS WITHIN OPENING PARTY TO EXTERNAL ATTACK
The supremacy battle within LP predates Obi’s membership and his emergence as presidential candidate. The two factions were led by Victor Osagie and Abure Julius, which a Federal High Court ruling ordered NLC to unite by organising a unity convention. Then a former president of the NLC, Aliyu Wabba, who intervened with little success through an out of court settlement among the warring factions, left Abure to ride the storm in the hope that normalcy would return to the house after the presidential poll. With time, Abure had consolidated his position. His failure to reach out to aggrieved members during the polls reawakened the old hostilities, which the opposition, most probably, exploited during the polls to reduce the party’s growing voter power.
Former National Publicity, Abayomi, who was suspended during electioneering in 2023 and was on Thursday reinstated by the new exco, acting on the disputed Abuja High Court ex parte order, was accused of working for the governing APC during the just concluded polls. He was accused of scheming to delay till the last minutes the submission of names of National Assembly candidates in some states in the Southwest to INEC, leaving the party to field few candidates there.
He denied the accusation. He told this newspaper that apart from Lagos where the party was hamstrung at the National Assembly level, even though it went on to win a House of representatives seat, (Thaddeus Attah, who won the Eti-Osa Federal Constituency seat), what took place in areas like Ogun State and other states in this geo-political zone was the result of the tactless handling by Abure.
COMMON FRONT
Despite the festering crisis within, both factions are agreed on one mission: The post-election court case must be prosecuted to its logical conclusion.
Abayomi says: “The leadership of the NWC under Lamidi Apampa is one hundred percent with Peter Obi. We believe we have been robbed of victory in the general election and we will retrieve it through the court of law.”
Yinusa said, “We will continue to fight until we reclaim our mandate legally.”
On Friday night, pro-Abure supporters with the assistance of some loyal state chairmen of the party forcefully gained entry into the premises and building earlier sealed by the police, vowing to resist any attempt to muzzle the party and stop its leaders from continuing their litigation on the poll.
Amos Esele is the Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.
