The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Edo state council accused the national chairman of the Labour Party (LP), Julius Abure, of running LP as a personal business.
Edo NLC, while picketing the state’s secretariat of LP on Ogbelaka Street, off Sokponba Road, Benin, over alleged financial rascality and contempt of the congress by Abure, declared that the lawlessness would no longer be allowed.
The NLC’s Edo team, which was led by its vice chairman, Suleiman Abubakar, noted that LP belonged to the Congress, saying the NLC should be carried along in every decision while warning that the Congress would not allow Abure to impose any candidate on them as the new national chairman.
Abubakar said: “We were directed across the 36 states of Nigeria to picket all LP’s offices. We ought to have done the picketing on Wednesday, as directed by the Political Commission of NLC, but because we were unable to mobilise our members, we decided to shift it to today (Thursday).
“Abure is running LP as his personal property. Everybody should be carried along. Abure has announced the date for LP’s national convention. He wants to hand-pick and impose a candidate on us. This is not the time to hand-pick and impose on anybody.
“The way forward is for Abure to go to the national level and resolve his differences with the leaders. He must learn to play by the rules of the game. We are not being sponsored, nobody is sponsoring us.”
Edo publicity secretary of LP, Comrade Sam Uropka, while reacting, insisted that NLC had abandoned its primary responsibility to Nigerian workers, while chasing shadows, at a time when the workers were dying of hunger and suffering.