Labour Party chairman rejects Olusegun Mimiko rejoining party

The National Chairman of Labour Party (LP), Dr. Mike Omotosho has accused former Governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko of attempting to destabilise the party, vowing that his re-entry into the party would be resisted.

He said in Abuja yesterday that Mimiko’s re-entry into the party is to launder his sagging political image.

Mimiko had presented a three-paragraph resignation letter to the PDP yesterday where he said he is returning to his former party, LP.

In the resignation letter, he accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), PDP and other opposition parties making development impossible in the country.
The President Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba also stated that the party would not welcome him back.

Addressing a press conference at the NLC secretariat in Abuja, Omotosho lamented that the erstwhile governor abandoned the party when they needed him most.

They described his defection in 2015 as a betrayal of the platform that gave him succor in the darkest hour of “his political career” especially as manifested in his two-term victory on the ticket of Labour Party.

The party alleged that it was common for Mimiko to use the platform to gain political relevance.

He stressed that the party would not allow him do that, urging him to stir clear.

Omotosho explained: “Nigerians would recall that Dr. Mimiko abandoned the Labour Party for the People’s Democratic Party a few days to Labour Party’s October 2015 National Convention. Such a treachery and betrayal of a party that gave the former governor succour in the darkest hour of his political career especially as manifest in his two term victory on the ticket of Labour Party is to say the least, cheap and callous. It also revealed paucity of knowledge of the philosophy of the Labour Party as a peoples’ rooted party and dearth of class consciousness on his part.”

He said Labour Party is an offspring of the working class family and was midwifed by the labour movement and a political vehicle for Nigerian workers and the Nigerian poor.

Omotosho said labour movement, in alliance with its civil society partners and other patriotic Nigerians, is poised to fully reclaim the Labour Party and restore it as a model political institution that does not only epitomize the Values of the working class family but also capable of contesting for power with members of a failed political class, with whom the former governor dines and wines.

He stated that while the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) continues to work to rebuild the party especially through the instrumentality of its political commission, saying, “we urge all workers and indeed genuine lovers of popular democracy to ignore the political theatrics of people like the former Governor of Ondo State. He has shown Nigerian workers that he cannot be trusted. The Labour Party is no longer a transit bus to strange political destinations particularly under the subterfuge of people like him.”

He also added that the NLC disown and-condemn recent posturing and proclamations by some politicians in Ekiti State that they are the candidates of the Labour Party in the forthcoming governorship elections in Ekiti State.

“The Labour Party has no candidate in the July 14, 2018 governorship election in Ekiti State. lNEC, workers and the Ekiti electorate should not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the antics of political impostors.