The Director General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun, has blamed the crisis rocking the party after the 2023 general elections on the judiciary.
Osuntokun stated this in an interview on
Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday.
He said that the judgment by Justice Hamza
Muazu of a Federal Capital Territory High Court ordering the party’s Chairman,
Julius Abure, and other national executives of the party to stop parading
themselves as national officers of the Labour Party instigated the crisis in
the party.
He said: “There is nothing going on (in
Labour Party) other than the crisis of the judiciary. It is a judge, the
judiciary that made a judgment that is now responsible for creating a crisis
in the Labour Party.
“It was a judge here, who in his discretion,
said that Abure, who has been chairman for the primaries of the presidential,
for the governorship, for the state houses of assembly;
“A judge thereafter gave a judgment that
that chairman should no longer parade himself as a chairman. What do you make
of that? And look at who and who brought the case to him.
“The judge is a Nigerian, he reads newspapers
like the rest of us, he could have taken a more logical position on what was
brought before him.
“Does it mean that if a clerk in the Labour
Party brings a complaint before you, you can give a judgment on the basis of
that?”
According to Osuntokun, the judge had the
option of allowing the chairman of the party remains in his position and go on
with the case, but he rather chose an option showing that he was “setting the
party up for a crisis.”
Recall that Justice Muazu had issued the
restraining order to the LP national officers, while ruling in the ex-parte
application on April 5.
Following the Abuja court judgment, the
Deputy National Chairman of the party (South), Lamidi Apapa, declared himself
the acting Chairman of the party.
However, a state high court sitting in Benin,
on April 6, restrained Labour Party and all its members from any suspension of
Abure and other national officers till the determination of the motion on notice.
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