How Judiciary caused crisis in Labour Party – Osuntokun

Akin Osuntokun, Director General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, has blamed the courts for the party’s crisis following the 2023 general elections.

He said that the party’s current problem was caused by a decision by Justice Hamza Muazu of a Federal Capital Territory High Court ordering the party’s Chairman, Julius Abure, and other national executives of the party to stop parading themselves as national officers of the party.

“There is nothing going on (in Labour Party) other than the crisis of the judiciary. It is a judge, the judiciary that made a judgement that is now responsible for creating a crisis in the Labour Party,” Osuntokun said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday.

The LP campaign DG further said, “It was a judge here, who in his discretion, said that Abure, who has been chairman for the primaries of the presidential, for the governorship, for the state houses of assembly. A judge thereafter gave a judgement that that chairman should no longer parade himself as a chairman. What do you make of that? And look at who and who brought the case to him.

“The judge is a Nigerian, he reads newspapers like the rest of us, he could have taken a more logical position on what was brought before him. Does it mean that if a clerk in the Labour Party brings a complaint before you, you can give a judgement on the basis of that?”

Osuntokun maintained that the judge had the option of allowing the chairman of the party remain in his position and go on with the case, but he rather chose an option showing that he was “setting the party up for crisis.”

Justice Muazu had in April 5 issued the restraining order to the LP national officers while ruling in ex-parte application.

Following the Abuja court judgement, the Deputy National Chairman of the party (South), Lamidi Apapa, declared himself the acting Chairman of the party.

However, a State High Court sitting in Benin, on April 6, restrained Labour Party and all its members from any suspension of Abure and other national officers till the determination of motion on notice.