National Chairman of Labour Party, Julius Abure, has alleged that money meant for the payment of workers’ salaries went missing, when the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) protested at the party’s secretariat.
The leadership of the NLC had encouraged its members to picket state and national offices of the labour party on Wednesday, in an attempt, they say, to save the party from corruption, call for the resignation of the party chair and demand the postponement of the earlier scheduled national convention.
The NLC accused Abure of “financial rascality and contempt for the leadership of NLC”, and of “unilaterally trying to hold a national convention in contravention of the constitution of the party”.
The protest was largely seen as underwhelming across the nation but the one scheduled at the national headquarters caused a bit of headache for the party hierarchy, in a statement issued by Obiora Ifoh, Labour Party’s National Publicity Secretary, Abure, described the NLC picketing as “a show of shame.”
“Where they besieged the office, broke the fence, destroyed the gates, unlawfully took possession of the secretariat and destroyed properties worth millions of naira,” the statement read.
“Properties stolen, including monies meant for the payment of salaries and other official purposes. This is unfortunate.
“I must state today that the leadership of NLC under Joe Ajaero is on the part of destroying the successes we have recorded in the 2023 general election.
“I had expected that as a responsible trade union centre, a responsible labour leader; he should have teamed up with Labour Party to see how we can team up together to make the country better.
“Unfortunately, and ironically too, the NLC is the one that is on the path of war against LP.
“I must state clearly that Ajaero as NLC President has not been able to organize a successful strike action.
“Not even a single protest or even picketing government establishment in order to bring government to accede to the numerous requests of workers.
“As we speak, there are unfair labour practices meted out to workers by several organizations in the country. I have not seen Joe Ajaero go to such organizations to picket them.”
The Labour Party chair also disputed claims about holding a secret convention and shut down insinuations the party is owned by the NLC, saying “we are not employers of NLC and they don’t have the legitimate reason to picket our office, we have no trade union dispute with NLC, there is no notice issued to us that we have a trade union dispute with NLC. This is clearly an abuse of office and abuse of the laws of the land.
“Let me also state here that the propaganda they have been carrying around that we are planning a secret convention is totally false.
“The NEC met April 2023 in Asaba and granted the permission that the convention must hold in one year. We started planning for the convention since then.
“We communicated to INEC as requested by the law. We have also informed all the stakeholders including NLC. I have discussed the issue with Ajaero on several occasions.”