Our reporter/ Justice Hamza Muazu of the Federal Capital Territory High Court on Monday refused to vacate an interim order restraining the National Chairman of the Labour Party, Mr Julius Abure, the National Secretary, Farouk Ibrahim and two others from parading themselves as leaders of the party.
He rather fixed April 20 to take all applications in respect of the case amidst a call by counsel of the embattled national officers of the party to have the matter heard speedily.
The counsel to Abure, Alex Ejesieme, had prayed the court to vacate the interim order and restore a semblance of sanity after a takeover of the Labour Party national secretariat by another faction.
The senior lawyer said the division in the party following the interim order has worsened to the point that four groups in the Imo State chapter of the Labour Party held parallel primaries.
Justice Muazu by way of intervention however ordered all parties in the suit to ensure speedy filing of their processes for a speedy hearing of the case.
–NLC officials storm secretariat in solidarity
Meanwhile, officials of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Monday stormed the National Secretariat of the Labour Party (LP) in Abuja to show solidarity for the party’s embattled National Chairman.
The NLC officials were led by its president Joe Ajaero to the Utako District of Abuja.
Ajaero in his speech, said the labour movement will resist any plot to throw the Labour Party into chaos.
“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,” he said.
“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 suffereth 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 are 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 explained that the NLC visited the LP headquarters to fish out those who want to usurp the party’s leadership.
“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 are illegally trying to enter our property,” he added.
“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.
“On the other hand, that was why the LP was formed. For anybody or group that thinks 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 it where ever it is located. Then they will know that all that they have was given to them by Labour.”
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