NLC: Nigerian Workers Constitute Labour Party’s Major Structure

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has reiterated that workers in the country have decided to support the Labour Party in the 2023 general elections.

Against the background of critics’ claim that the Labour Party as presently constituted lacks the necessary structure that would enable it win the presidential election, the General Secretary of the NLC, Mr. Emma Ugboaja said the organised labour has unanimously decided that the way forward was to re-adopt the Labour Party as a platform to take power.

Ugboaja who spoke to THISDAY, at the weekend, said that Labour Party was originally formed with the ideals and aspirations that are in line with that of the teeming workforce in the country.

He said: “Workers have decided to take their destinies in their own hands and they have checked all round and came to the conclusion that the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi is among the finest the country has ever produced. So it is not a question of unknown quantity, he has antecedents.

“His antecedents sit squarely well with what our aspirations are to have our workers engaged, to have the unemployed engaged, for justice come into play and to ensure the redistribution of the wealth of our country and to turn it into the wealth of everybody rather than the wealth of a few and to have the capacity to save after taking care of the needs of the workers to use in developing the country in the future,” he said.

” In our deliberations, there was single mindedness and unanimity that the way forward is to really re-establish the Labour Party which of course is a creation of the Nigeria Labour Congress and the working people of Nigeria. So there is always a time and a season. The moment has met the labour movement in Nigeria and there is no going back,” he said.

Speaking on critic’s claim that the Obi has no structure and that labour party was not prepared to win the 2023 election, the NLC scribe said: “Labour Party could have been said to be unprepared when the labour movement in Nigeria was taken the back seat and it is an open secret that they were operating without the blessings of the two Labour centres in Nigeria.
“Now the Labour Party is operating with the blessings of the two Labour centre, you can’t be more prepared than that, you can’t be more prepared than the people that have struggled over the years to engage government on key existential issues that has still not been addressed.

“Is it security? Is it production of petroleum products? Is it minimum wage? You cannot be more prepared than a man who has yearned and argued for a decent engagement and now has the platform to express that. On the point being raised that the labour centres should not engage in partisan politics, Ugboaja said Labour has a written position on that: “People can’t change the goal post, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has decided on that matter, so anybody saying that, should be talking from the barracks and we are no more in the military regime.
“We are in a civilian democracy and the highest court of the land has ruled on the matter and as far as we are concerned, we stand on the rule of law.”

Ugboaja further dismissed the idea of the party being embroiled in intra-party crisis describing it as a non-issue.

“There is no crisis in Labour Party. Like I told you, labour party is our creation, the only crisis we had in the party was the two Labour centres not having confidence in operations of the Labour Party, but that has been reconciled.

“We now have an understanding and a written agreement in the direction. Anybody still talking about crisis in the Labour Party is just a figment of his imagination.”

He said presently there is no disagreement among the key stakeholders on the resolve to seek for the presidency of the country in 2023.

According to him, the constitution of the Labour Party reflects the ideals for which the Labour movement has been canvassing.

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