Obi won’t back Abure as LP chair, says NLC

The Nigeria Labour Congress has expressed conviction that the Labour Party presidential flag bearer, Peter Obi, won’t back Julius Abure to remain in office as the party national chairman.

The Deputy President of the NLC Political Commission, Prof. Theophilus Ndubuaku, disclosed this in an interview with Saturday PUNCH.

Ndubuaku also refuted the claim that the union had resolved its differences with the embattled leader of party and members of the National Working Committee.

The development came in the wake of denial by Obi’s camp that the former Anambra State governor had endorsed the Abure-led NWC following their contentious convention that returned them to office.

The growing tension between the party leadership and Obi’s camp heightened last week when his campaign team announced that his celebrated visit to the LP secretariat was a reconciliatory move and not an endorsement as being peddled in a section of the media.

Reacting to the drama, Ndubuaku said Abure was merely leaving on borrowed time, stressing that there was no way a “Peter Obi we know” can endorse him following the strange manner he was returned to the leadership seat of the party.

He said, “There was no way that the Peter Obi we know can endorse Abure, especially in this present situation. You can’t tell a man he is not doing the right and still go ahead to endorse him. It is wrong.

“We never believed it until I eventually met Obi himself when he was travelling out of the country the next day and asked me to meet him by 6.30 am. He just made it very clear to me that there was nothing of sort. His spokesperson, Yunusa Tanko, also said that much in the statement he released after Obi’s visit to the secretariat.

“You need to listen to what Obi is saying. He said he wants to make peace within the party. The only problem he has with Abure, in my opinion, was the fact that the man is not doing the right thing. He just wants the right thing to be done. That is all.

“If Obi calls for a meeting, it will be between the real owners of the party and the transactional hijackers. This is because if nobody challenges you, you can get away with anything. It is the only way to reposition the party and its structure.