Onyekachi Eze 
The Labour Party (LP) National Caretaker Committee Chairman, Nenadi Usman, said the National Working Committee (NWC) headed by Julius Abure was fired to save the party from being axed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
At its NEC/Extended Stakeholders’ meeting at Government House Umuahia last week, the opposition party announced the former Minister of Finance as the leader of a 29-man caretaker committee to run its affairs for 90 days.
The committee was saddled with the responsibility of rescuing the LP from its current leadership crisis and organising a convention where a new leadership of the party would emerge from the Ward to the national stage. Usman said at the committee’s inaugural meeting in Abuja yesterday sought unity in the party.
She said the leadership crisis in the LP would have forced INEC to take “our beloved party out of its books for having no legally acceptable leadership that meets the requirements of our country’s Electoral Act”. She said the Commission would have no alternative “but to deregister our party from their portals and exclude us from all elections.
“That course of action was successfully averted on September 4 in Umuahia.” The former representative of Kaduna South in the Senate appealed to party members to unite to make the LP a formidable and indomitable election winning party nationwide. Usman said: “This is a tall, demanding order.
But it is achievable if we submit to the spirit of forgiveness of the wrongs of the past by all sides, reinforce the values of our party’s founding fathers and bond diligently as one family on a voyage together into the future.” She pledged equal opportunity, fairness and justice to every member, irrespective of social status, tribe, religion and gender, as enshrined in the party’s motto.
The ex-minister added: “On September 4 in Umuahia, Abia State, no team, group or divide of our party’s various episodes of conflict was vanquished. “Everyone won. Therefore, no group or divide should feel any sense of shame or defeat.” She expressed a willingness to accommodate every group.
Usman said: “No matter how long it takes, those who keep the faith, reason together, fight together from the trenches as a band of brothers and soldiers of freedom are bound to win together as victors of liberty.”
