Peter Obi campaign DG accuses judiciary of creating crisis in Labour Party

The Director General of the Labour Party (LP) Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun, has blamed the judiciary for the crisis rocking the party.

Osuntokun said that the judgment by Justice Muazu ordering Abure and other national executives of the party to stop parading themselves as national officers of the party created the crisis currently engulfing the party.

“There is nothing going on (in the Labour Party) other than the crisis of the judiciary. It is a judge, the judiciary that made a judgment that is now responsible for creating a crisis in the Labour Party,” Osuntokun said on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday.

“It was a judge here, who in his discretion, said that Abure, who has been chairman for the primaries of the presidential, for the governorship, for the state houses of assembly.

“A judge thereafter gave a judgment that that chairman should no longer parade himself as a chairman. What do you make of that? And look at who and who brought the case to him.

“The judge is a Nigerian, he reads newspapers like the rest of us, he could have taken a more logical position on what was brought before him. Does it mean that if a clerk in the Labour Party brings a complaint before you, you can give a judgment on the basis of that?”

The LP has been in a leadership tussle since the loss of its presidential candidate Peter Obi in the 2023 general elections .

The Federal Capital Territory High Court in Abuja issued an order restraining Julius Abure from acting as the national chairman of the LP.

The party’s Secretary, Farouk Ibrahim, and two others were also stopped from acting as national officials.

Other party officials affected by the order include the National Organising Secretary, Clement Ojukwu, and the Treasurer, Oluchi Opara.

The restraining order was given by Justice Hamza Muazu while ruling on an ex-parte application argued by James Onoja, who told the court how the restrained National officers reportedly forged several documents from the FCT High Court in order to carry out unlawful substitutions in the last general elections.

Following the Abuja court judgment, the Deputy National Chairman of LP (South), Lamidi Apapa, declared himself the acting Chairman of the party.

Some LP state chairmen, however, disowned Apapa who they described as a factional leader, throwing their weight behind Abure as LP chairman.