It’s mutual opportunism gone awry — the Labour Party (LP)-Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) rumble. But the surprise is the fierce — if not the sudden — bust-up.
Can you imagine: Julius Abure’s LP excoriating the seldom introspective Joe Ajaero, earlier drubbed by irate Imo partisans during Comrade Joe’s illicit foray into Owerri — an LP politician-at-heart, moonlighting as avid Labour unionist, but fobbing no one but himself?
Or Ajaero’s NLC Political Commission firing the first shot — the voice of Jacob but the hands of Esau, as LP’s Obiorah Ifor alleged — counter-blasting its rather territorial Aluta guardian archangel, even calling out Ajaero to quit his “rascality” as NLC president; and come vie as LP national chairman, if indeed, he loves LP more than its card-carrying members?
So, the height-challenged Joe and the tall, lanky Julius now go toe-to-toe on the Labour boxing ring — like Anthony Joshua and Cameroonian Francis Ngannou?
Who is David and who is Goliath in this fierce battle for the soul of Labour — or rather in the gambit of political smart Alecs using Labour’s name to make hay?
Indeed, mutual opportunism always cops a sorry end — and this would appear yet another living proof. But it might be morning yet on the Labour rumbling wars!
How will all that impact workers, in these harsh economic times, when they need focused leaders to extract the best possible deals from the government and the private sector, on the virtual eve of sealing a new national minimum wage?
But maybe the spine of organized Labour deserves the often distracted Joe Ajaero? His often comical resort to unworkable strikes ought to have sparked instant rank-and-file rebuke, if not outright mutiny.
But lo! The Labour “mass” seems to suffer, rather gladly, Ajaero’s costly distractions. Their cross! No else would carry it but themselves.
Still, this smouldering LP/NLC tiff oozed out with both sides posturing on high value, no matter how pretentious.
The NLC Political Commission lobbed the first bomb — Julius Abure was running a one-man show: a one-man show birthing needless crises in LP; the holy LP, which cadres and members must be beyond reproach, as the proverbial Caesar’s wife!
The NLC bombed Abure, decrying the LP national chair’s inability to “showcase the leadership qualities epitomized in the founding ideology of the Labour Party”. That, it claims, makes him unfit for the position, yet he clings to it, thus triggering crises all round.
Is Abure fairly docked for alleged sit-tight syndrome? Only LP insiders can tell. But pray, what’s LP’s “founding ideology”, as the NLC Political Commission claims?
From Ondo’s Olusegun Mimiko, that first gifted LP its first high political office in the Ondo governorship (2009-2017), to Peter Obi, candidate for the clannish and faith-zealot tendencies of Nigerian politics, and unfazed shaman for the starry-eyed youth, LP’s practical “ideology” has been partisan whoredom.
In-between elections, LP ghosts into a sepulchral quiet — only to burst into life during election seasons, cat-walking for hire, to the highest bidder! It’s a growth area LP’s smart Alec leaders have milked all their hustling and whoring years.
It was same under Dan Iwuanyanwu, LP pioneer national chair (2004-2014).
It has been the same under Julius Abure, the “comrade” that has hugged the capitalist Peter Obi with such beatitude, as if his chairmanship life depends on it. It probably does!
It probably would be the same in the post-Abure years, when Peter Obi would have moved on — he did from APGA and PDP, didn’t he: despite his “oath” to the late Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu that he’d never leave APGA? — and LP, true to its “founding philosophy”, goes after the next partisan punters, to stay politically relevant.
The NLC can huff and puff as it likes. But LP isn’t about changing!
For LP allegedly scorning its over-bearing control, the NLC sapped Abure with a sole administrator complex: “The sole administrator mentality of Mr. Abure,” the NLC roared, “has stood in the way of efforts by the NLC Political Commission to intervene and resolve the leadership crises in the Labour Party.”
Again, only insiders could confirm or reject this charge. But might it be a case of madmen and specialists, to pun the title of one of Prof. Wole Soyinka’s popular plays?
But Obiorah Ifor, LP’s national spokesperson since the ouster of Abayomi Arabambi — he of the Lamidi Apapa faction, bitterly feuding for the party’s soul — quickly dismissed any notion LP would be a sitting duck for NLC’s savage bazookas.
Obiorah Ifor! Since he took charge as LP national publicity secretary, he has always blazed away from the hips. You don’t know what drives him, though: a clannish fealty to Peter Obi? Or a rabid ideologue of LP’s rank opportunism during election seasons?
Whatever drives him, the fiery Ifor hasn’t disappointed, with his staccato of return fire, since NLC opened the first front in the Labour war.
He reminded the uppity NLC, should anyone suffer culpable amnesia: “Labour Party has a life of its own, different from that of the Nigeria Labour Congress.”
Is that so, though? Can the child, LP, be totally detached from his parent, NLC?
He further dismissed NLC as a bundle of contradictions. He opened a virtual can of worms in NLC-LP antipathy and alleged blackmail, reportedly dating back to 2014, giving Ajaero a free tutorial on drinking from the wise pool of the likes of Ayuba Waba (Ajaero’s predecessor) and Olaleye Quadri (former Trade Union Congress president), on polite collaboration, as against Ajaero’s alleged crude domination.
Then, the big gun: “This is an NLC which cannot think of calling a protest and sustaining it, in order to get the attention of the government for the interest of the workers.”
Ouch! — that hurts — for it underscores Ajaero’s strike-first-think-later habit — which he has deployed in four not-so-glorious strikes between 29 May 2023 and now.
Coming from inside Labour, that’s a sucker punch! Though it’s no secret that Ajaero’s rashness, coupled with his hare-brained politicking, may have hurt workers’ interest much more than it helped, such censure coming from inside Labour, is all the more nettling.
But even more nettling, the Ifor rhetorical question: “Can the NLC of today in any way be compared to NLC of the then Hassan Sunmonu [the first NLC president, 1978- 1984], Adams Oshiomhole — charismatic and cerebral, though as physique-challenged as Ajaero — and a few others in the past?”
Sour grapes? Or searing fact?
The NLC-LP rumble is yet another manifestation of the systemic void in the Nigerian political party system, which LP epitomizes, perhaps more than any other.
But the double tragedy here is the tale of rampaging elephants. When that happens, the grass underneath suffers.
Workers deserve far better than capitalist shamans spurring LP, at a gallop, for opportunistic power; or a wolf in sheep’s skin using NLC for personal power and glory.
But then again, it’s the workers’ cross to lug — no one else’s.
