Senator Victor Umeh, who represents Anambra Central in the National Assembly, has declared that the recent Supreme Court judgement has effectively ended Julius Abure’s tenure as National Chairman of the Labour Party (LP).
Speaking to newsmen, Umeh said the apex court’s verdict was final and left no room for Abure to continue in office. He urged the embattled party leader to heed the Supreme Court’s admonition and step down.
“The door has been shut on him (Abure), and the only thing left to him is for him to reflect over the admonishment given to him by the Supreme Court that officers of a party should be humble enough to leave office when their tenure expires,” Umeh said on the programme.
“His tenure has expired, he knows it, and he is in breach of an agreement which became a consent judgement of the Federal High Court that he should do the following things, and he refused to do them. From that time till today, Abure has not held any congress anywhere.”
The lawmaker also advised Abure to take the olive branch from Senator Nenadi Usman’s National Caretaker Committee of the party to join the process again if he thinks the party people love him and want him to continue as chairman.
Umeh said Abure could not make himself chairman without going through the process of getting him reelected. Senator Umeh said that Abure should have taken his wise counsel based on his experience of many years as the chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) for many years.
The LP senator said that he saw the situation coming and advised Abure but was dismissed by the embattled LP chieftain.
The Labour Party has been embroiled in a leadership crisis pitching Abure and members of his cabinet against Nenadi Usman’s Caretaker Committee constituted by the party’s presidential candidate in 2023, Peter Obi, Governor Alex Otti and other elected officials of the party.
Last week, a unanimous judgment by a five-member panel of the apex court held that the Court of Appeal lacked the jurisdiction to have pronounced Abure National Chairman of the LP, having earlier found that the substance of the case was about the party’s leadership.
The apex court held that the issue of leadership was an internal affair of a party over which courts lacked jurisdiction and noted that Abure’s tenure had since expired.
The court allowed the appeal filed by Senator Nenadi and one other and held that it was meritorious before subsequently proceeding to dismiss the cross-appeal filed by the Abure faction of the LP for being unmeritorious.
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