Utako, Abuja – Barrister Julius Abure, the national chairman of the Labour Party (LP), has declared that no vacuum exists in the leadership of the party.
As reported on Monday, April 7, by Vanguard, Abure said any declaration to the contrary by any person or group was a nullity.
Abure stated this while speaking to party faithful at the ongoing national executive committee (NEC) meeting of the party at the party’s national secretariat in Utako, Abuja, on Monday, April 7.
Legit.ng recalls that the Supreme Court had on Friday, April 4, set aside the judgment of the court of appeal, Abuja, which upheld the leadership of Abure.
The five-member panel of jurists, at the apex court held that the court of appeal, Abuja, lacked the jurisdiction to have pronounced Abure as the national chairman of the LP having earlier found that the substance of the case was about the party’s leadership.
Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, Abure interpreted the judgment in his favour.
Abure, through a statement signed by the LP’s national spokesperson, Obiora Ifoh, insisted that the Supreme Court judgment did not remove him from office.
He argued that the ruling merely held that the courts lacked jurisdiction to interfere in internal party matters, thus striking out both Senator Nenadi Usman’s appeal and LP’s original suit.
The statement read:
“The Supreme Court judgment didn’t sack LP national chairman Barrister Julius Abure; rather it rightly upheld the preceding and accumulated high court and appeal court judgments upholding the immutability of responsibility of Labour Party structures to choose its leaders.”
He added that the appeal court judgment in the Labour Party versus Ebiseni and Others(CA/ABJ/CV/1172/2024), which upheld his leadership on November 13, 2024, remained valid and had not been appealed.
Revisiting the issue on Monday, April 7, Abure said:
“There is no vacuum in the leadership of the Labour Party. The Supreme Court judgment did not say the tenure of the current NWC under my leadership has expired.
“The so-called national caretaker committee is an illegal body unknown to any law guiding the Labour Party.
“What happened in Umuahia, Abia state, was not a NEC meeting; as such, the so-called caretaker committee is an illegal entity.
“The purported caretaker committee is just a meddlesome interloper whose sole purpose is to destroy our party.”
More to follow…