Amidst tight security, the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, on Monday, stormed the national secretariat of the Labour Party at Utako in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja to show solidarity with the embattled national chairman, Julius Abure.
The LP has been enmeshed in a leadership crisis for about two weeks now following the FCT High Court interim injunction restraining the party’s chairman from parading himself as the national chairman.
Arising from the FCT court order, the party’s national vice chairman (South), Lamido Bashir Apapa assumed the position of the chairman in acting capacity.
Addressing workers at the party office, the NLC’ president, Joe Ajaero said the labour movement will resist any plot to derail the Labour Party, especially now that it is enjoying wide acceptance by Nigerians.
He said under no circumstances will the labour movement allow anyone to derail the party they worked hard to recover from impostors.
The visibly angry NLC President said, “Today, we say enough is enough. Never again will any human being enter here under any guise, under any order. Even if we lose our leadership, we have to meet as trustees of this party to decide the next line of action.
“For anybody to illegally declare himself either as chairman, secretary or anything, we urge all workers anywhere in the country, where you see such people, arrest them and bring them to us.
“The hour has come. The Bible says, “From the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of God sufferreth violence. And violence taketh by force. Now we have come to take our party, we have come to establish our party. As the fastest growing party, you can see that envy and jealousy is crippling in. The people that are pioneering this to sabotage us let’s announce here that we know your fathers.
“If you continue this way, we will go after your fathers. We leave it here until we finish our private discussion. Let it be known to the whole world that the NLC fathered LP and we will not abandon our child,” he said.
Ajaero said that the NLC decided to visit the party headquarters to fish out intruders that want to usurp the leadership of the Labour Party.
“For some time now, we have not been visiting our house we decided to visit our house this afternoon after getting some information that there are some rodents trying to move into our house and we have come with some insecticide to fumigate the house from any rodents that is illegally trying to enter our property.
“So that is why we are here, incidentally, we didn’t see any rodents but we will comb around and see whether there are any. The LP is a child of circumstances. It began, when we lost almost all confidence in the existing political parties. And we felt that the LP will be the ideal political party that will represent our ideological persuasions.
“In the other hand, that was why the LP was formed. For anybody or group to think that they can sabotage or derail our ideological move, we will resist them with the last drop of our blood.
“This was formed by the NLC and TUC. This is our party. Nobody can come from the blues and declare himself as the chairman or secretary of our party without our consent.
“It is not done. Such people, if they attempt to come here next time, all their property, all their houses, their residential houses, we will occupy them wherever they are located.
“Then they will know that all that they have was given to them by Labour,” he said.
The leadership of LP later went into a closed door meeting with the NLC delegation.