The picture below says more than most Nigerians would think.
Labour Party existed mostly only on paper before Peter Obi became their presidential candidate in the 2023 general elections. Abure, the self declared Labour Party Chairman, could not before then have been able to take this picture with Wike. Obi is the only reason why his name features in political discussion at all.
However, the man suffers from a disease that afflicts most Nigerian public personalities, which is lack of self esteem and self dignity which leads to their lacking institutional pride for the position and institution that bring them prominence, and their being in readiness to betray that institution and self-prostitute.
Let me leave Abure and the LP for the moment and take us to the Judiciary. The APC, being uncertain about what its fortunes would be in election litigations in 2019 under a judiciary headed by Walter Onnoghen, CJN, as he then was, decided to remove him. They were not certain of succeeding through the constitutional process of impeachment by a resolution backed by two-thirds of the Senate. They decided on a treacherous and abominable process of dragging the CJN before a constitutionally inferior executive controlled tribunal called, the Code of Conduct Tribunal.
That was an affront to the entire Judiciary that should never have been allowed to see the light of day. Lawyers reeled in shock and had to pinch themselves to convince themselves that this was real and happening. It was up to the Judiciary, specifically the Court of Appeal, to put a stop to the horror. When the matter got to that court on an interlocutory appeal, I said to myself, “this is it, this is where this mess ends”. However, there was Bulkachuwalization of the Court of Appeal at that time in favor of some politicians, as the elderly Senator Bulkachuwa later confessed on the floor of the Senate. So, the Court of Appeal looked the other way and sent the Chief Justice of Nigeria to the dogs.
There was no institutional pride that should have compelled saving the office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria from ridicule and protecting the dignity, sanctity and independence of judges and the Judiciary in general. The Chief Justice of Nigeria was removed with ignominy – sacked like a Grade Level 01 office cleaner or even worse.
Somehow, we all still believe that the Supreme Court and Judiciary of today is still the same before the ignominious removal of Onnoghen, CJN. No. Not at all. There was a transaction to effect that removal or, if you prefer, the unlawful removal that was aided by the Judiciary constituted a transaction between the Judiciary and the Executive in which the Judiciary traded away its protection and pre-eminence under the Nigerian Constitution. Breaking away from it to restore prior glory and positioning in the minds of the people requires extraordinary judicial will and an extraordinary judicial act. It was like the transaction between the biblical Isau and Jacob. The scriptures report that just like the Nigerian Judiciary, Isau got up from that handshake and went away thinking that nothing had changed and still considered himself the heir to honour and glory, until the day of rude and brutal reminder.
We come back to Abure, factional chairman of the Labour Party. In 2023, the Labour Party did not have a single elected official under its banner, not even a Councillor. After the elections, with Obi as its flag bearer and the Obidient Movement that he inspired, the Labour Party had 7 Senators, 35 House of Representative members and many State House of Assembly members. Peter Obi himself was the third leading candidate in numbers (but the second in constitutional reckoning) in the presidential election. Effectively, the Labour Party jumped from a party without reckoning to the third ranking party in the country in under 8 months of Obi joining the party.
You would have thought that a reasonable party chairman would have given anything to build on that success and move his party to number one position come 2027. Then you do not know how fundamentally self unaware and hollow the average Nigerian in privileged position is. They are always grasping for the wind and go about with such deep seated internal poverty that makes them believe that self prostitution to the next person that they consider, in their self-debasement, to be in a position that is more worthy than the one that they have been gifted with, is their destiny.
Abure considered being called Labour Party Chairman to be of more value than the party sustaining and improving on its 2023 phenomenal electoral achievement. From my participation in national politics as a presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections, I know that party officials look forward to receiving and feasting upon party nomination forms. The Labour Party was essentially a rent-a-party platform for those wishing to try their luck at elections and could not get a chance in the established or more serious minded parties. Income from the sale of nomination forms every four years is the sole reason for the existence of such parties.
Abure, lacking the necessary self respect and nobility to envisage a party that is number one in the country, which he helped to build, prefers the retrogression into the former rent-a-party status of the Labour Party. For now, the gain from renting the party out to interests that are bent on frustrating a repeat of the Peter Obi challenge in 2027 seems to be good.
However, what will happen when Obi defeats the evil schemes and contests the presidential election in 2027? What would become of Abure? For the answer, look at the picture again. What do you see in these two men? Hollowness. Two people dying slowly internally. They know that the present attention is transient and no one, not even those that they have sold themselves to at this time, will ever take them seriously again. The tears of Isau await them at the point of award of permanent honours.
By Chuks Nwachuku, legal practitioner and leadership and good governance advocate, [email protected]
