The Labour Party (LP) national chairman, Barr. Julius Abure, has begged supporters and loyalists of the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, popularly called the ‘Obi-dient Movement’ not to leave the party.
Abure alleged that a lot of people, particularly, the ruling oligarchy has infiltrated the Obi-dient movement, adding that they are currently striving to carry some innocent Obi-dient members along in derailing and unnecessarily criticising the party in order to bring it to disrepute and pull it down.
Abure’s comment is coming on the heels of crisis rocking the opposition party, including formation of a faction by Lamidi Papa-led group and allegations of financial recklessness levelled against him by the national treasurer of the party, Mrs Oluchi Opara, who was later suspended.
Speaking at a press conference in his office in Abuja, Abure said some of the complaints from the Obi-dients were not germane.
“Part of these complaints is that a lot of Obi-dients who want to belong to the party have not been fully absorbed. To this extent, I must state clearly that you will recall that the Labour Party went round the country at the height of the Obi-dient Movement to assimilate and make easy all those who wanted to be members of the party and indeed, the structure of Labour Party is strong today because a lot of Obi-dients were used to consolidate the structure of the party.
“As we speak, a lot of Obi-dient are ward chairmen, ward executives, Local Government and State Executives and some at the national level,” Abure said.
He said some Obi-dient members have also complained that absorbing them into the party had been so difficult.
“However, to solve this problem, we have developed a membership registration App that will make registration in the party seamless and easy.
“I hereby advise that every member should participate in the registration and the revalidation of members,” Abure said while forming a directorates to quickly attend to most complaints of the Obi-dients.
“We have decided to create a whole Directorate dedicated to the Obi-dient family,” he added.