Deborah Akinyosoye
The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has re-enlisted the name of Julius Abure on its website as the National Chairman of Labour Party, Vanguard checks have revealed.
It also re-enlisted Alhaji Umar Farouk Ibrahim as National Secretary of the party.
According to the commission, the reenlistment was based on an order of court.
The commission equally has Senator Samuel Anyanwu as National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP. It did not however indicate whether the decision was based on a court order.
The Supreme Court had last month set aside earlier decisions of the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal which recognized Mr Abure as Labour Party’s National Chairman.
Since then, Abure had continued to lay claim to the seat, relying on the apex court’s decision that the issue of his chairmanship remained an internal affair of the Labour Party and was therefore not justiciable.
However, Abia State Governor, Alex Otti and the 2023 presidential candidate of the party, Mr Peter Obi had insisted on the validity of a Caretaker Committee, chaired by Senator Nenadi Usman, saying the ruling effectively sacked Abure.
Governor Otti had on April 9 formally presented to INEC, a Certified True Copy of the Supreme Court judgment concerning the party’s leadership.
According to him, the meeting was aimed at fostering clarity, mutual understanding, and institutional alignment regarding the LP’s current structure.
An INEC source said Abure’s name was re-enlisted after studying the Certified True Copy CTC of the judgment.
According to him, the Supreme Court judgment did not deal with the “Res” or substance of the matter as it only ruled on the lack of jurisdiction by the lower courts, a development which implied that the “status quo ante bellum” remained.
The Supreme Court had also in March overturned the decisions of the Court of Appeal and the Federal High Court which sacked Senator Anyanwu as the National Secretary of PDP.
Before then, there had been a protracted leadership tussle between Mr Anyanwu and Mr Sunday Ude-Okoye, who was reportedly chosen by some governors of the party. Like in the case of the LP, the apex court had ruled that the lower courts had no jurisdiction to have entertained the matter ab initio, which it said remained an internal affair of the PDP.