Edo State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), yesterday, picketed the Edo State Labour Party (LP,) secretariat, at Ogbelaka Street, Benin City, over alleged financial rascality and contempt of the NLC by the National Chairman of the party, Mr. Julius Abure.
The operation was led by Edo State Vice Chairman of the NLC, Suleiman Abubakar, who also accused Abure of running the party like his personal business.
Abubakar claimed that the LP belongs to NLC and therefore NLC should be carried along in every decision, adding that the NLC would not allow Abure to impose any candidate on them as national chairman.
He said: “We were directed across the 36 states of the federation to picket the Labour Party offices across the states. We ought to have done the picketing on Wednesday as directed by the political commission of NLC but because we were unable to mobilize our members.
“The reason is that the National Chairman, Julius Abure, is running the party like his personal property. Everybody should be carried along. He has announced the national convention and wants to hand-pick and impose a candidate on us. This is not the time to hand-pick and impose anybody.
“The way forward is for him to go national and resolve his differences with the national leadership. He must learn to play by the rules of the game. We are not being sponsored, nobody is sponsoring us.”
NLC has left its responsibilities
Reacting to the development, the Edo State Publicity Secretary of the LP, Sam Urokpa, said the NLC has abandoned its primary responsibility to Nigerian workers and are chasing shadows while workers are dying of hunger and other challenges facing Nigerian workers.
He said: “The Nigeria Labour Congress has left their primary responsibility. They are supposed to be fighting for the interest of workers for a better living. They have left all these things and they are fighting a political party that is not in government. Workers are suffering. Look at the current minimum wage,the cost of food stuff. Today a lot of people cannot pay for transport to their places of work. The NLC is not looking into that but they are fighting political parties.”
How many of them are card-carrying members of the Labour Party? For you to query what is happening in a political party, you must be a card-carrying member and also discharge your financial responsibility to the party. Many of them are in PDP, others are in APC. So why are they concerned with the events in the Labour Party?” (Vanguard)