By Michael Chibuzo
It was the presidential candidate of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP) in the 2023 presidential election, Engr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who first likened the Labour Party to the popular laxative, Andrew’s Liver Salt, which forms noisy bubbles in solution before it quickly disappears. Speaking about the Labour Party at the Chatham House in January 2023, Kwankwaso said, “We have seen the maximum any party especially Labour party can go. To us, it’s like Andrew’s liver salt. It came with a lot of hype and now, it is coming down. Just take note of it.”
Just a year down the line, the famous Andrew’s liver salt prediction of Kwankwaso has apparently come to fulfilment. First, the Labour party disgraced itself at the courts after filing the most watery election petitions in the history of Nigeria. Their supporters followed it up with an unprecedented bullying of the judiciary as they simply wanted the courts to just declare Peter Obi winner with no shred of evidence to prove their case. The judiciary withstood the intimidation and threw away their case with minimum fuss. This took the wind off the sail of the Obidients and the LP.
In the aftermath of the Presidential Election, in-fighting ensued within the Labour Party itself with two factions emerging following a bazaar of court injunctions. On one side is the Lamidi Apapa-led faction while Julius Abure leads another faction which enjoyed the support of Mr. Peter Obi. The two factions displayed movie scenes for Nigerians during the tribunal sittings at the Court of Appeal in Abuja with the Abure faction manhandling Chief Lamidi Apapa on one occasion to the applause of the Obidient mob and the silent approval of Mr. Peter Obi who never condemned the incident. Obidients labelled Apapa, an APC agent meant to destabilize the Labour party.
As the battle of supremacy between the Apapa and the Abure factions raged on in various courts, Labour Party Obidients were displaying political rascality that Obi often pretends to condemn in Edo State. Two officials from the Apapa-led faction namely, Comrade Anselm Eragbe (the National Youth Leader) and Mr. Patrick Anethua were nearly lynched by Abure supporters late last year in Edo State as they attempted to conduct ward and local government Congresses for the party.
The video of their brutal beating and near-murder went viral with Obidients rejoicing and as usual Mr. Peter Obi keeping mum in tacit approval. Yesterday, months after the assault on Anselm Eragbe, Abure was arrested by the police following a petition of attempted murder written by the Apapa faction’s national youth leader to the police. He was later released on bail.
Abure’s arrest is however coming on the heels of further chaos within his own faction of the Labour Party following the call by the National Treasurer of that faction, Oluchi Oparah for the embattled Julius Abure to account for N3.5 billion the party realised from the sale of forms and other fund raising in the 2023 general elections cycle. Less than 48 hours after making that call for accountability, Abure orchestrated the suspension of the National Treasurer for 6 months.
The suspension of Oluchi obviously did not sit well with Peter Obi, he hurriedly called a press conference where he belatedly presented a scanty account of funds realised by his campaign and how they were expended through a Labour Party chieftain, Aisha Yesufu. However the main reason for the press conference, which many did not easily decipher was to call for the investigation of Abure over his misappropriation of party funds.
Obidients took the call by Obi as a cue to descend on Abure with many prominent Obidients claiming their erstwhile darling National Chairman, Julius Abure was planning to suspend Obi from the party and tagged him an APC mole. This, in effect means a civil war has been declared between obidients and the Labour Party establishment. With the influx of fairweather politicians into many state chapters of Labour party, the ability of Obi and the national leadership of the party to manage the many big egos will determine how soon the party may implode. It may be very soon, if current trajectory is anything to go by.
There is also the unending periodic wars among Obidient influencers especially between Yoruba Obidients who are viewed with suspicion by the other Obidients notably from the Igbo divide. The Obidient movement is equally turning irreversibly into a tribal movement and alienating their potential allies in future elections that hail from other tribes. The popular refrain of ‘elections have consequences’ by Obidients whenever bad news occur in APC strongholds has seen many pro-Obi folks from outside the South East reconsidering their support for both the Labour Party and Obi himself.
The pillars upon which the Obidient movement and Labour Party currently rest on are shaky at the moment. The church that borrowed its wing to Obi and Labour Party in 2023 now seem cold to the Obidient movement after Obidients took on some pentecostal churches in their usual cancel routine. With Abure increasingly losing grip of the party leadership amidst a cold war with Obi, who seems to be operating a parallel structure of his own at the moment with the way he is using unelected individuals like Aisha Yesufu to carry out tasks ordinarily reserved for party officials, the disarray in labour party is just beginning.