Julius Abure, factional national chairman of the Labour Party (LP), has advised Seriake Dickson, national leader of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), to be cautious in his alliance with Peter Obi and his supporters.
Obi is the presidential candidate of the NDC. He secured the party’s ticket on May 30 after he was ratified at its national convention held in Abuja.
In a statement he personally signed on Monday, Abure said Dickson appeared to have learnt from the recent crisis in the LP, describing the NDC leader’s alleged refusal to concede all elective positions in the party to Obi’s supporters as commendable.
Abure alleged that Obi and Alex Otti, governor of Abia, and many of their supporters who won elections on the platform of the LP in 2023 have since turned against the party’s leadership.
elf. 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,” the statement reads.
“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.
Abure claimed that the crisis in the LP worsened when the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) obeyed a court ruling which said the tenure of the party’s leadership had lapsed, giving rise to 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 said.
He noted in the light of what transpired in the LP, “it is strategically” important for Dickson to retain some control within the NDC by ensuring that his own supporters occupied positions in the party.
“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,” Abure said.
Abure further claimed that Obi’s supporters joined the NDC to dominate the party’s structure as they allegedly did in the LP.
“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 noted that his comments were prompted by questions about how the LP managed Obi and his supporters during the 2022/2023 election cycle.
According to him, the party made significant sacrifices to accommodate Obi’s interests, including granting many tickets to his supporters free of charge.
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 attempting to take over the party’s leadership following disputes over the tenure of its executives.
The leaders, particularly, Peter Obi and Alex Otti decided to take over the leadership of the party,” he said.
He added that elected officials who emerged on the party’s platform failed to support it financially, urging the NDC to learn from the LP’s experience.
