Labour Party chairman Patrick Utomi has called on the party’s supporters to strive for leadership that will advance the party’s principles.
In response to Friday’s Supreme Court decision regarding the party’s leadership dilemma, Professor Utomi made this statement.
In its decision, the Supreme Court reportedly overturned an Appeal Court decision that acknowledged Julius Abure as the party’s national chairman.
Nenadi Usman’s appeal on the leadership issue was affirmed by the court, which rejected Abure’s cross-appeal for lack of substance.
Following the decision, Utomi informed the party’s supporters on Saturday that the surge that fueled Peter Obi, the party’s 2023 presidential contender, was the result of the combined efforts of Wale Okuniyi, Ayuba Waba, and the former president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
He underlined how important it is that they support the party’s social democratic ethos.
It said: “As the Labour Party’s leadership attempts to rebuild its house and bring everyone together, let me remind stakeholders of the reasons why I, along with Wale Okuniyi as ground engineer, and then-NLC President Ayuba Waba, worked together to create the Labour surge that fueled Peter Obi and the Obidients in 2023.
“It was an expression of a desperate need to save Nigeria through rejecting machine politics that just seeks to capture power. In 2015, we discovered that power capture alone is useless unless ab initio shared ideals and a framework for collective accountability are developed.
In his statement during a celebration of my birthday on February 6, 2022, Ayuba Waba resolutely stated that we wanted to alter the trajectory of Nigeria’s electoral democracy by establishing political parties as forums for laying out a clear route for the country’s progress.
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The party we wished to establish should then seek for individuals who are committed, competent, compassionate, and have good character. They should then be shaped, trimmed, and matched with entrepreneurial social democratic values that prioritize the needs of the people. while pursuing swift economic expansion in order to alleviate poverty through the creation of jobs in a market that is competitive and socially harmonious.
“In the many hours of meetings in Ayuba Waba’s office at the NLC offices in Abuja which I chaired, I never hid my admiration for Scandinavian free enterprise models in which education and health care were radically socialized, universal and geared to production.
Finding individuals whose methods fit these fundamental tenets of the third force we set out to create is essential for making an influence.
