A chieftain of the Labour Party, Sir Basil Maduka, in his statement with Adedayo Akinwale, explains why he took the party to court and his decision to support LP’s candidate, Senator Athan Achonu, for the November 11, 2023 gubernatorial poll in Imo State.
Three primaries were held in Imo state for the governorship election, which of the factions conducted your primary?
There was an exco in Imo state. Because of the situation and what happened in the presidential election, the party by its wisdom, led by Barrister (Julius) Abure dissolved the state exco because of the confusion that came on board during the presidential election, where they saw that the existing exco then had overstayed their tenure.
So, they needed to conduct the primaries. So the leadership of Abure dissolved the current exco as at that time and set up another Interim State Working Committee. So the last exco did handover of the party, they took off. But two weeks after that, there was a court injunction. The party office was sealed. Behold, we were told that some four Hilux cars came from the Government House to seal off the party office. The court injunction says the status quo should remain. But there is exco sworn in already, their names are in INEC. That was part of the genesis of the problem. It was Abure who signed the appointment letter for them.
So, because of that court injunction, the party by its wisdom called stakeholders meeting in Abuja, what is the way forward? So, along the line, the party by its wisdom set up a committee to come and handle the primary election. Their mandate was to revalidate the party’s register, conduct primaries and do Congress within that three months.
So these people that are already existing said they have to conduct the primaries since their tenure has not expired.
The committee set up by Abure was also there, that was how we had two parallel primaries. These people who were already existing had to now produce me as the authentic candidate because the matter was still in court. The committee set up by Abure produced another candidate. So let the court interpret who is the authentic candidate.
It was much later we began to hear there is someone called Lamidi Apapa. It was in the process of court we had there was another person who claimed that he did primaries, we then asked him how come? On which structure, who did the primary?
That was how we started hearing about Apapa. So, since the matter is in court, let the court interpret. These people are the State Working Committee set up by Abure.