Our party has no leadership –LP Senator

Victor Umeh, Senator representing Anambra Central Senatorial District, has said that the Labour Party (LP) currently has no leadership.

He disclosed this while speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme.

The lawmaker, a chieftain of the LP, was reacting to questions concerning the crisis in the party.

The presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi and other critical stakeholders led by Governor Alex Otti of Abia State had on Wednesday took a bold step towards recreating the political platform.

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In a move aimed at ending the crisis in the party since the controversial national con­vention held in Nnewi, Anambra State, by the Julius Abure-led National Work­ing Committee (NWC), the sole Labour Party Governor of Abia State and the national leader of the party, Obi, decided to take the bull by the horns by summoning an enlarged National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party in Umuahia where a far-reaching decision was made to give direc­tion to the party.

After exhaustive delibera­tions on how to move the party forward, a former Minister of Fi­nance, Senator Nenadi Usman, was nominated to head an inter­im National Working Committee (NWC) with a 90-day mandate to organise congresses at all levels of the party including a nation­al convention to elect substantive officers of the party.

However, a factional acting Chairman of the Party, Callistus Uju Okafor, has rejected the appointment of former Minister as the chairman of the caretaker committee of the party.

In a statement in Abuja, Okafor described the LP stakeholders’ meeting as illegal, unconstitutional and a jamboree.

He urged Nigerians to know that the meeting that produced Senator Usman as the interim national chairman of the party was null and void.

Also, Abure’s group has since rejected the meeting, saying it is illegal.

But speaking on the issue, Sen. Umeh said there was no leadership in place, stressing that it was the duty of members to take control of the party.

“People who are asking this question do not understand that when you don’t have a legitimate executive committee in charge of their party, the issue of whether the Constitution is followed or not will become unnecessary. We don’t have a legitimate executive committee now.

“Those who are claiming to have the powers to do so have not told Nigerians that their tenure in office has since expired as a result of exhaustion of time and because they didn’t do what they were supposed to do to bring in a succeeding leadership in the party, the party is right now without leadership.

“There must be a chairman of the party legitimately before you begin to complain about infractions on the constitution. Those who are raising these questions do not understand that they are no longer in place and if you are not in place, nature abhors a vacuum,” he said.

Defending the meeting in Abia, he said the party people could come together to decide to create a new leadership for the party when there is no leadership in place.