The factional national chairman of the Labour Party (LP), Julius Abure, has cautioned Seriake Dickson, national leader of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), to be careful in his political partnership with Peter Obi and his supporters.
Obi emerged as the NDC’s presidential candidate after securing the party’s ticket and being ratified at its national convention in Abuja on May 30.
In a statement personally signed on Monday, Abure said Dickson appeared to have taken lessons from the internal crisis that rocked the Labour Party, praising what he described as the NDC leader’s refusal to surrender all elective positions in the party to Obi’s supporters.
Abure alleged that Obi, Abia State Governor Alex Otti, and several individuals elected on the LP platform in 2023 later turned against the party leadership.
“They say, history usually repeats itself. Senator Dickson and Co have seen their trajectory and learnt from what happened to us, that a lot of them after they have won and now in government turned round and were struggling with the leadership of the party,” he said.
“I want to say that Obi and his followers are ingrates who will never remember the sacrifices you made for them. It is even dangerous for the leadership of the NDC to wholly hand over the elective positions to Obi and his followers.
“We did it in 2022/23, immediately they saw that Obi was interested in the leadership of the party, all those elected under the platform of the party simply followed Obi, forgetting all the sacrifices and suffering we made for them.”
He further claimed that the Labour Party’s crisis deepened after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) acted on a court ruling that declared the tenure of the party’s leadership expired, leading to the emergence of the Nenadi Usman-led interim national committee.
“They fell into the trap of INEC, when the commission deceived them to say that the tenure of the executive has expired. We had expected them to reject that position,” Abure stated.
According to him, the NDC leadership should ensure that some positions remain in the hands of its loyal members so that the party’s leadership would still have internal support during future disputes.
“He needed to bring his own people so that when the chips are down, he will also have people that will speak and defend him,” he said.
Abure alleged that Obi’s supporters joined the NDC with the intention of dominating its structure, similar to what he claimed happened in the Labour Party.
“They trooped into NDC with Obi hoping to occupy every space like they did in the Labour Party. No leader of any political party seeing what Obi did to the Labour Party, along with his followers will make that mistake again,” he said.
He added that the LP made major sacrifices to accommodate Obi and his supporters during the 2022/2023 election cycle, including allocating several tickets at no cost.
“We ensured that Obi’s interests were adequately taken care of. We only looked at his body language, and we obliged most of his supporters’ tickets,” he said.
“Most of the tickets were for free believing that we were investing in those persons in line with the philosophy of the party, expecting that when they win, they will bring along necessary support that will help in the growth of the party.
“But ironically, when they came into power, they went after the leadership of the party.”
Abure also accused Obi and Otti of trying to take control of the party’s leadership following disagreements over the tenure of LP executives.
“The leaders, particularly, Peter Obi and Alex Otti decided to take over the leadership of the party,” he alleged.
He further claimed that elected officials who emerged on the LP platform failed to provide financial support to the party and urged the NDC leadership to avoid repeating what he described as the mistakes made by the Labour Party.