9 months ago
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Nigerian Labour Congress President, Joe Ajaero
The National Publicity Secretary of the Labour Party, Abayomi Arabambi, has condemned Wednesday’s invasion of the party’s secretariat by the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, led by Joe Ajaero.
Arabambi said the security agents should arrest Ajaero for treason for planning a political insurrection against the Federal Government.
This, he claimed he wanted to achieve through conduct likely to cause a breach of peace with his call for members to invade the 36 states chapter of Labour Party offices.
This, he said, could lead to a breakdown of law and order.
Arabambi disclosed this on Wednesday at a press conference held in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital.
He said the call for the picketing and subsequent invasion and destruction of the Labour Party national secretariat by the NLC is illegal, archaic, and not in tandem with modern democracy.
He said, “We are now fully prepared to shed our blood in defence of our party leadership, as all unconventional or illegal means to hijack our party leadership, against the rule of law shall be met with force and this is not a threat.
“We shall defend our party leadership from being taken over by NLC political terrorists. We are prepared to dislodge the NLC miscreants from the party national secretariat as nobody has a monopoly on violence.
“For anybody to illegally declare himself either as chairman, secretary or anything, we urge all workers anywhere in the country, to arrest them and bring them to us.”
He said when a matter is pending before a court and, in this case, the Supreme Court, all parties were meant to maintain the status quo as decided by the Court of Appeal.
“We believe that if there is any score to settle, NLC should have gone to court and allowed due process to take its course rather than coercing political parties to dance to their tunes as if they were dealing with the corporate organisation.
“NLC is a movement which by every standard should remain apolitical. Thousand and one issues affect Nigerian workers today, which the NLC has failed woefully to fight for.
“The set of NLC leadership as we have today is a failure who put an elephant on the head and scratched for rats on the grounds,” he added.
Arabambi said that while the party was aware of the court judgement that said that NLC was part of those that formed the party, the court did not give outright ownership of the party to the NLC.
He said contrary to NLC’s claim, the March 20, 2018 judgment by Justice Gabriel Kolawole did not confer ownership of the party on the NLC but gave the right to all Nigerians including workers, women, and all strata of the society to be co-owners of the party.
“So NLC should face the job of the labour movement and allow politicians run affairs of politics and if they want to go into politics, let those who have the spirit of comradeship take over the affairs of NLC so that the politicians among NLC executives will leave the stage for those who can truly fight for the course of the masses.
“Labour Party therefore agrees in totality with Nigerians who called for non-partisanship of Labour movement that the leadership of the NLC should be non-partisan,” he concluded.
