The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called on workers nationwide to arrest and bring to Abuja the factional leaders of Labour Party (LP), led by the party’s national vice chairman, Lamido Bashir Apapa .
NLC President Comrade Joe Ajaero made the call in Abuja when he led the leadership of the Congress on a visit to the party secretariat in Abuja Monday.
He told reporters that the Congress would occupy the homes and properties of opponents of the LP national chairman, Julius Abure, if they come near the national secretariat of the party again.
It would be recalled that a Federal Capital Territory High Court, Abuja, had ordered Abure to stop parading himself as the national chairman of the party a week after a ward in the Edo state chapter of the party suspended him over alleged anti-party activities.
Shortly after the court order, Apapa, the party’s national vice chairman, who had been accused of being sponsored by the opposition parties, took over the party in acting capacity.
But in another twist, a High Court in Benin also gave an order, restraining anybody from removing the embattled party chairman from his office.
According to Ajaero, as trustees of the party, no one has power to occupy any position in the party without their consent.
“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 Labour party to decide the next line of action.
“For anybody to illegally declare himself either as chairman, secretary or whatever, 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 is creeping in. The people that are pioneering this, to sabotage us, let’s announce here that we know you are 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: “For some time now, we’ve 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.
“We have come with some insecticides to fumigate the house against any rodent that is illegally trying to enter our property. That’s why we are here.
“Incidentally, we didn’t see any rodents, but we will comb around and see whether there are any. The Labour Party is a child of circumstances.
“It was formed when we lost almost all confidence in existing political parties, and we felt that the Labour Party would be an ideal political party that would represent our ideological persuasion. That was why it was formed.
“For anybody or group of people, to think that they will sabotage or derail our ideological movement, we will resist it with the last drop of our blood.
“This was formed by the NLC and the TUC, it is our party. Nobody can come from the “blues” and declare himself as the Chairman or the Secretary of our party without our consent.
“If such people attempt to come here next time, all their property, their houses, we will convert it to labour party offices – their residential houses, we will go and occupy it wherever it is located and they will know that all the property they have was given to them by the Labour.”