OBIORA IFOH, CLEMENT OJUKWU & OTHER NDIGBOS AGAINST PETER OBI'S PRESIDENTIAL BID: IMPLICATIONS TODAY & FUTURE"
PRE-RESIGNATION REFLECTIONS 001
OPEN REPLY TO OBIORA IFOH'S CLAIM LP NATIONAL CHAIRMAN, PUBLICITY SECRETARY NOT PARTY MEMBERS
By Prince Tony Akeni, (Interim Labour Party National Publicity Secretary)
HIGHLIGHT
"For several years before 2010, the Labour Party chapter of Delta state was abolished by the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party's then national chairman, Chief (Barr.) Dan Nwanyanwu and late Alhaji A.A. Salaam, then National Secretary. The national leadership stated that this was because of rogue sellout of elections to the PDP dynasty of the Delta governors at the time, James Ibori and later Emmanuel Uduaghan. After entreaties to me by a delegation led by Emeka Nkwaola of Asaba textile union, I led remnants of the party in Delta state to Abuja to the National Chairman, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, to unproscribe the Delta state chapter."
"The meeting which began with awkward, high octave hostility ended with roaring success after my intense presentation of a case for Delta LP's restoration.
"After my presentation and resolution of the mission, I, in that same occasion, presented to the National Chairman, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, and his NEC a written proposal for the establishment of a "Labour University" by the Labour Party and its NLC founding institution for Nigeria's workers and underprivileged Nigerians in general. Chief Nwanyanwu enthusiastically received the proposal with the opening words: "Ideas rule the world." ...If the LU concept had been followed through by the Labour Party and the NLC, Labour University would have celebrated more than its 10th anniversary by this year.
"Beyond the successful restoration of the Delta state LP chapter by Chief Nwanyanwu's NEC, in order to expand the nationwide membership base of Labour Party at the time, I developed a membership recruitment scheme to boost the size and personality roll-call of the Labour Party in Delta state in particular and Nigeria in general. This culminated in my leading personality recruitment engagements and delegations to frontline Delta personalities such as Prof. Pat Utomi in Lagos, Barr. Victor Odebala of Sapele, the late veteran labour leader Chief Frank Kokori, also in Lagos, and other non-Deltans who included Cross River state former governor, Mr. Donald Duke.*
"At that time (in 2010), over fifteen years ago to the day, Julius Abure, Obiora Ifoh's master and saviour of his political universe, was a blurred mere dot in the circle of Labour Party affairs, to borrow Muhammadu Buhari's phrase; an unknown background shadow working as a postal clerk in NIPOST, Edo state, while somewhere in the west Arabambi was roaming in the wilderness of nowhere. Neither of the two was anywhere near the pedestal of my already region-wide influence ambit, much less national activity status in the Labour Party.
"Given the above, if these creatures, Obiora Ifoh and Abayomi Arabambi, were well brought up growing up, they would lie lizard flat on their bellies to greet me in obeisance wherever they meet me. Not interrogate my membership of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, it is apparent they were not.
"While many Nigerians who are not Igbos are dying for Obi's cause, fellow Ndigbo themselves such as Obiorah Ifoh, Clement Ojukwu, Joe Igbokwe, Minister David Umahi, Governor Charles Soludo, Governor Emmanuel Mbah, former governor Orji Uzor Kalu, the loquacious and delirious National Assembly Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, Prisoner Ike Ekweremadu, similar doppelgangers or evil twins of the Igbo nation and sections of stomach infrastructure Ohaneze leadership have been going about like drunken sailors in a beach party recklessly endorsing Tinubu for 2027.
"With opium abandon, they have, both overtly and covertly, set out to reduce the extraordinary generational gem Nigerians of all tribes have found in the person of Peter Obi from "Obi Nwanne of Africa" to "PO of Agulu village," in the same manner their political ancestors cornered, narrowed and minimized Azikiwe from Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha.
"Peter Obi's last best chance and the South-East's next best shot for a long time at the Presidency of Nigeria is 2027. If in 2027 Igbo nation allowed these Igbo political lice succeed to wreck Peter Obi's presidency bid while other Nigerians who are not Igbo are laying down their lives for a Peter Obi Igbo Presidency, let no Igbo person anywhere under the sun, elite or commoner, say Nigerians do not love the Igbos. It will be more correct, almost forever after, to say that Igbos do not love themselves. From 2027, it will officially become a universal maxim, signed and sealed by the Igbos themselves, that the Igbos love what is in their individual pocket and stomach more than their collective posterity and future."
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| Tony |
1. I read with profound sympathy for Igbo nation and Peter Obi, in particular, the recent bad air from one Obiora Ifoh in his reaction to a private memo addressed to the Sen. Nenadi Usman led National Executive Council (NEC) and Board of Trustees of the Labour Party, which, unfortunately, leaked and found its way to the Nigeria public a few days ago through the Vanguard and Punch newspapers of October 17 and '18 respectively, amongst others.
2. To begin, let me dismiss with despatch Obiora's misleading claim in the above referred Punch newspaper wherein he alleged that Labour Party's national chairman, Sen. Nenadi Usman, is not a member of the party because, according to Obiora, Sen. Nenadi is not in the membership register of Abure's dead NEC of the party. A rebel band which Nigeria's highest court, the Supreme Court, comprehensively sacked on April 4, 2025.
3. Mr. Obiora Ifoh and one Abayomi Arabambi, another political rodent in the Julius Abure colony of felony which specializes in candidate fraud, documents forgery, grand thefts and perjury, jointly share the same title of "National Publicity Secretary" in the Supreme Court sacked defunct Julius Abure council of the party; a crass misnomer against Labour Party's constitution.
4. Together, these two creatures constitute the ugliest, ethically depraved noise drums in the political space of contemporary Nigeria.
5. First, why should any Labour Party member be found in the register of a council declared dead and buried by a terminal judgment of the highest court in the land?
6. Secondly, all courts of Nigeria, from the lowest to the apex court, scrutinized, certified and satisfied themselves of Sen. Nenadi Usman's membership of the Labour Party, hence she was recognized as having locus standi on behalf of the party in all suits she filed against the Abure swarm, all of which she won without exception, eternally annulling and obliterating Abure's impersonating group from existence.
7. Next, let's look up Comrade Tony Akeni's membership of the Labour Party and his leadership status in the party. He was also declared by Obiora as one not in their dead council's membership register.
8. For several years before 2010, the Labour Party chapter of Delta state was proscribed by the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party's then national chairman, Chief (Barr.) Dan Nwanyanwu and late Alhaji A.A. Salaam, then National Secretary. The Nwanyanwu NEC held that the shutting down of the party in Delta was because of rogue sellout of elections to the PDP dynasty of then Governor James Ibori and later Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.
9. On June 12, 2010, remnant stakeholders of the disbanded Delta state LP led a delegation to me (Tony Akeni) in Benin as a Labour Party stalwart of the South-South states who was recommended to them for my reach across the party. The Delta LP delegation, led by Mr. Emeka Nkwaola of the Asaba textile union and comprising one Mr. Emmanuel Emuakpodje, Pastor Tracy Agol and others, had come to entreat me to lead them to Chief Dan Nwanyanwu to plead a case for lifting the suspension of the Delta state Labour Party chapter in order to enable them participate in elections in Delta state.
10. This later came to include the Delta state governorship re-run election of February 6, 2011, after Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, who was the Chief Judge of the Appeal Court Benin, in a seismic judgment that shook the country, sacked Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan for electoral transgressions in the 2007 governorship election of Delta state. Justice Monica is presently the President of the Appeal Court of Nigeria, Abuja.
11. On June 12, 2010, I was in a June 12 celebration podium at the centre of a sea of music fiesta crowds at Museum Ground, King's Square, Ring Road, Benin City, with Dr. Osagie Obayuwana, performing musicians Majek Fashek and Orits Wiliki, Apostle Comrade Paul Oyarenua and other dignitaries when the Emeka Nkwaola delegation from Delta state entreated me to a side canopy to explain their predicaments and entreaty to approach National Chairman Chief Dan Nwanyanwu to unproscribe Delta Labour Party.
12. I was a co-coordinator of the June 12 rally in my capacity as Director of Mobilization of Nigerians United for Democracy (NUD), whose national leader was legal luminary Femi Falana (now SAN). Dr. Obayuwana was our state leader of the NUD, while Apostle Comrade Paul Oyarenua was our Edo state chapter chairman.
13. Arriving Abuja the following week, the late Alhaji A.A. Salaam, then the national secretary of Labour Party, received my delegation and heralded us to the front of Chief Dan Nwanyanwu. The meeting which started with awkward, high octave hostility ended with roaring success after my intense presentation of a case for Delta LP's restoration.
14. After my presentation and resolution of the mission, I, in that same occasion, presented to National Chairman Chief Dan Nwanyanwu and his NEC a written proposal for the establishment of a "Labour University" by the Labour Party and its NLC founding institution.
15. Chief Nwanyanwu enthusiastically received the proposal with the opening words: "Ideas rule the world." He went on to narrate that while he was a struggling young man fresh out of school and used to travel by "luxurious buses" from the east to Lagos, he experienced how an entire jumbo bus would be stopped by pressed passengers to stop in the middle of nowhere, and passengers would run into the bush to relieve themselves.
16. Nwanyanwu said he afterwards at some forums suggested that toilet compartments should be built into luxurious buses. He narrated that a few years later, to his pleasant surprise, the first set of luxurious buses fitted with toilet closets arrived Nigeria. He concluded that my idea of a "Labour University for less privileged Nigeria workers and Nigerians in general" could see the light of day some day just like his closet idea in luxurious buses.
17. After the Abuja delegation, Emeka Nkwaola of Imo state became the Delta state chairman of Labour Party, Emmanuel Emuakpodje of Kokori town, Delta Central, the state secretary, Emmanuel Amalokwe of Obiarukwu, Delta North, the organizing secretary and I, from Isoko nation, Delta South, the Delta state Labour Party publicity secretary, amongst others. Chief Dan Nwanyanwu and other persons mentioned above except A.A. Salaam and Majek Fashek are still alive to confirm this report.
18. Beyond the successful restoration of the Delta state LP chapter by Chief Nwanyanwu's NEC, in order to expand the nationwide membership base of Labour Party at the time, I developed a membership recruitment scheme to boost the size and personality roll-call of the Labour Party in Delta state in particular and Nigeria in general. This culminated in my leading personality recruitment engagements and delegations to frontline Delta personalities such as Prof. Pat Utomi in Lagos, Barr. Victor Odebala of Sapele, the late veteran labour leader Chief Frank Kokori, also in Lagos, and other non-Deltans who included Cross River state former governor, Mr. Donald Duke, in his office at Victoria Island, Lagos.
19. Earlier, when Prof. Pat Utomi visited my kingdom of Ozoro in 2007 with his ADC presidential campaign train and was received in the home of 2nd Republic deputy Speaker of defunct Bendel State and 3rd Republic Senator, late Sen. Francis "Spanner" Okpozo, I, being a double-barrel prince of the kingdom, was by Sen. Okpozo's side to receive and hear Utomi on behalf of our palace political elite.
20. Earlier in 2006 when the brilliant late Sen. Pius Ewherido, a former deputy Speaker of Delta state, came to Ozoro kingdom with his campaign entourage to sell his Delta governorship aspiration and Sen. Okpozo also received him on behalf of our kingdom, I was also delegated to receive him as observer on behalf of Ewherido's friends and associates of Ozoro kingdom. Pius attended Notre Dame College (NDC) Ozoro as a kid and had many friends and well-wishers in our kingdom. We were looking to convert him to the Labour Party if PDP missed him as their candidate.
21. In the 2010 meeting with Chief Kokori in his home in Lagos, he addressed us on a wide range of issues from my entreaty of him to join the Labour Party as a veteran labour doyen, his arrest, torture and gulag travails during the June 12 struggle under tyrant Abacha to Chief Great Ogboru's contest-and-run-away perpetual governorship syndrome. You could feel intimately all over the war-tested labour veteran a traffic of exhaustion from moral betrayals and the agony of a loving one-woman man as he pointed upstairs over our heads, where he nursed his cherished wife who, he told us, had been bedridden for years. Chief Kokori concluded that day, "I don't have the energy to do this anymore. But maybe, for one last time because of your delegation, I will think over it."
22. That one last time made us to see him again, thin and bone weary, in Chief Ogboru's re-run governorship rally at Ughelli in 2011. He died a dozen years later on December 7, 2023 at the age of 80.
23. Except late Chief Frank Kokori, Sen. Francis Okpozo and Sen. Pius Ewherido, all the persons mentioned above, fortunately, are alive. Go and verify, as Peter Obi would say.
24. In 2010, over fifteen years ago to the day, Julius Abure, Obiora Ifoh's master and saviour of his political universe, was a blurred mere dot in the circle of Labour Party affairs, to borrow Muhammadu Buhari's phrase; an unknown background shadow working as a postal clerk in NIPOST, Edo state, while loitering somewhere in the west Arabambi was in the wilderness of nowhere. Neither was anywhere near the pedestal of my already region-wide influence ambit, much less national activity status in the Labour Party.
25. Quite ahead of me in LP affairs then were the irrepressible Veteran Comrade Lawson Osagie. Side by side Pa Victor Aguebor, Pa Irowa, Chief Patrick Osagie Eholor (Ultimate Equals) and Pa Gabano, I held the Labour Party media trumpet in the background during the years of Adams Oshiomhole as governor of Edo state.
26. I was among the backroom influencers of the party when we organized and coordinated the Edo state Labour Party congress at Gabano Hotel, near Uniben, which brought Bishop Samuel Omede to office as Edo state LP chairman. Afterwards, from the dim backyards of his NIPOST employment Julius Abure clawed, scrambled and spidered his way into the spot of state secretary in Bishop Omede's state council of the Labour Party.
27. Given the above, if these creatures, Obiora Ifoh and Abayomi Arabambi, were well brought up growing up, they would lie lizard flat on their bellies to greet me in obeisance wherever they meet me. Not interrogate my membership of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, it is apparent they were not.
*Hold Up. Stand Up for Peter Obi*
28. About 20years ago, I read the editorial of a Tanzanian newspaper that shook me to my bones from the acid contempt, even hate, with which many African nations see Nigeria and our country's internal politics.
29. It stated that Nigeria was one of the most absurd countries in the world where its citizens reduce their best to their lowest worst. Citing the life and times of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to exemplify the point, the Tanzanian newspaper said Nigeria had achieved the unbelievable feat of reducing the great Nnamdi Azikiwe from "Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha."
30. Together, African countries and the rest of the world are watching again. How, while many Nigerians who are not Igbos are dying for Obi's cause, while fellow Ndigbo themselves such as Obiorah Ifoh, Clement Ojukwu, Joe Igbokwe, Minister David Umahi, Governor Charles Soludo, Governor Emmanuel Mbah, former governor Orji Uzor Kalu, the loquacious and delirious National Assembly Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, Prisoner Ike Ekweremadu, similar doppelgangers or evil twins of the Igbo nation and sections of stomach infrastructure Ohaneze leadership have been going about like drunken sailors in a beach party recklessly endorsing Tinubu for 2027.
31. With opium abandon, some like Obiorah Ifoh, Clement Ojukwu and Benjamin Kalu have, both overtly and covertly, set out to reduce the extraordinary generational gem Nigerians of all tribes have found in the person of Peter Obi from "Obi Nwanne of Africa" to "PO of Agulu village," in the same manner their political ancestors cornered, narrowed and minimized Azikiwe from Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha.
32. Great Nigerians like Femi Falana, Dele Farotimi, David Hundeyin (South-West), Yunusa Tanko, Haruna Goro, Nana Kazaure (North), Deacon Chris Iyovwaye, Smart Madu Ajaja, Aisha Yesufu, Magnus Oraka, Peter Akah (Niger Delta South-South), Reginald Nnorom, Precious Oruche "Mama Pee" (South-East) and many others have erased crooked old boundaries in Nigeria's political topography to prove that Nigeria can be one huge, united country and Africa's democratic powerhouse.
33. Peter Obi's last best chance and the South-East's next best chance for a long time at the Presidency of Nigeria is 2027. If in 2027 Igbo nation allowed Igbo political lice succeed to wreck Peter Obi's presidency bid while other Nigerians who are not Igbo are laying down their lives for a Peter Obi Igbo Presidency, let no Igbo person anywhere under the sun, elite or commoner, say Nigerians do not love the Igbos. It will be more correct, almost forever after, to say that Igbos do not love themselves. From 2027, it will officially become a universal maxim, signed and sealed by the Igbos themselves, that the Igbos love what is in their individual pocket and stomach more than their collective posterity and future.
34. In our time, we must reject the poison of these Ndigbo wolves against Peter Obi's person and presidential project. We must reject the Tanzanian curse and stand up for Peter Obi in 2027, provided he stands up for himself by filtering out and disbanding his choristers of misleading praise singers, and rising above sycophancy indulgence to pillar his cause with genuine trench soldiers who tell him the truth that will lead to his victory.
35. Peter Obi and our Labour Party NEC must rise with a sense of urgency to launch confidence building agenda of actions and activities that will encourage and strengthen our party's remaining few loyal elected members of the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly across the country. No effort should be spared to inspire them to remain true to the PO 2027 presidency project.
36. In case Peter Obi and the Sen. Nenadi council are not adequately aware, currently these brave steadfast loyalists of our party are like forlorn IDP orphans in the National Assembly and various State Houses of Assembly.
37. They tip-toe about their daily activities within the National Assembly and State Assembly complexes to survive daily pressures on them to defect to the ruling APC and other ruling parties in various states.
38. They are under constant psychological onslaught of Tinubu's conquest storms under Senate President Godswill Akpabio's and Speaker Tajudeen Abbas' brinkmanship; an ancient Roman triumvirate determined to ensure Tinubu's wholesale state capture of Nigeria into a one-party banana pseudo-democracy. The time for all true Labour Party faithfuls to rally round them is now before it's too late.
God bless and keep us all, as many as will continue to stand tall by the truth and refuse to bow to Nigeria's god of cash-out corruption and political cash crops of compromised politics.
*Tony Akeni Le Moin*
Labour Party National Publicity Secretary (Interim)
PRE-RESIGNATION REFLECTIONS 001
OPEN REPLY TO OBIORA IFOH'S CLAIM LP NATIONAL CHAIRMAN, PUBLICITY SECRETARY NOT PARTY MEMBERS
By Prince Tony Akeni, (Interim Labour Party National Publicity Secretary)
HIGHLIGHT
"For several years before 2010, the Labour Party chapter of Delta state was abolished by the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party's then national chairman, Chief (Barr.) Dan Nwanyanwu and late Alhaji A.A. Salaam, then National Secretary. The national leadership stated that this was because of rogue sellout of elections to the PDP dynasty of the Delta governors at the time, James Ibori and later Emmanuel Uduaghan. After entreaties to me by a delegation led by Emeka Nkwaola of Asaba textile union, I led remnants of the party in Delta state to Abuja to the National Chairman, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, to unproscribe the Delta state chapter."
"The meeting which began with awkward, high octave hostility ended with roaring success after my intense presentation of a case for Delta LP's restoration.
"After my presentation and resolution of the mission, I, in that same occasion, presented to the National Chairman, Chief Dan Nwanyanwu, and his NEC a written proposal for the establishment of a "Labour University" by the Labour Party and its NLC founding institution for Nigeria's workers and underprivileged Nigerians in general. Chief Nwanyanwu enthusiastically received the proposal with the opening words: "Ideas rule the world." ...If the LU concept had been followed through by the Labour Party and the NLC, Labour University would have celebrated more than its 10th anniversary by this year.
"Beyond the successful restoration of the Delta state LP chapter by Chief Nwanyanwu's NEC, in order to expand the nationwide membership base of Labour Party at the time, I developed a membership recruitment scheme to boost the size and personality roll-call of the Labour Party in Delta state in particular and Nigeria in general. This culminated in my leading personality recruitment engagements and delegations to frontline Delta personalities such as Prof. Pat Utomi in Lagos, Barr. Victor Odebala of Sapele, the late veteran labour leader Chief Frank Kokori, also in Lagos, and other non-Deltans who included Cross River state former governor, Mr. Donald Duke.*
"At that time (in 2010), over fifteen years ago to the day, Julius Abure, Obiora Ifoh's master and saviour of his political universe, was a blurred mere dot in the circle of Labour Party affairs, to borrow Muhammadu Buhari's phrase; an unknown background shadow working as a postal clerk in NIPOST, Edo state, while somewhere in the west Arabambi was roaming in the wilderness of nowhere. Neither of the two was anywhere near the pedestal of my already region-wide influence ambit, much less national activity status in the Labour Party.
"Given the above, if these creatures, Obiora Ifoh and Abayomi Arabambi, were well brought up growing up, they would lie lizard flat on their bellies to greet me in obeisance wherever they meet me. Not interrogate my membership of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, it is apparent they were not.
"While many Nigerians who are not Igbos are dying for Obi's cause, fellow Ndigbo themselves such as Obiorah Ifoh, Clement Ojukwu, Joe Igbokwe, Minister David Umahi, Governor Charles Soludo, Governor Emmanuel Mbah, former governor Orji Uzor Kalu, the loquacious and delirious National Assembly Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, Prisoner Ike Ekweremadu, similar doppelgangers or evil twins of the Igbo nation and sections of stomach infrastructure Ohaneze leadership have been going about like drunken sailors in a beach party recklessly endorsing Tinubu for 2027.
"With opium abandon, they have, both overtly and covertly, set out to reduce the extraordinary generational gem Nigerians of all tribes have found in the person of Peter Obi from "Obi Nwanne of Africa" to "PO of Agulu village," in the same manner their political ancestors cornered, narrowed and minimized Azikiwe from Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha.
"Peter Obi's last best chance and the South-East's next best shot for a long time at the Presidency of Nigeria is 2027. If in 2027 Igbo nation allowed these Igbo political lice succeed to wreck Peter Obi's presidency bid while other Nigerians who are not Igbo are laying down their lives for a Peter Obi Igbo Presidency, let no Igbo person anywhere under the sun, elite or commoner, say Nigerians do not love the Igbos. It will be more correct, almost forever after, to say that Igbos do not love themselves. From 2027, it will officially become a universal maxim, signed and sealed by the Igbos themselves, that the Igbos love what is in their individual pocket and stomach more than their collective posterity and future."
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| Tony |
1. I read with profound sympathy for Igbo nation and Peter Obi, in particular, the recent bad air from one Obiora Ifoh in his reaction to a private memo addressed to the Sen. Nenadi Usman led National Executive Council (NEC) and Board of Trustees of the Labour Party, which, unfortunately, leaked and found its way to the Nigeria public a few days ago through the Vanguard and Punch newspapers of October 17 and '18 respectively, amongst others.
2. To begin, let me dismiss with despatch Obiora's misleading claim in the above referred Punch newspaper wherein he alleged that Labour Party's national chairman, Sen. Nenadi Usman, is not a member of the party because, according to Obiora, Sen. Nenadi is not in the membership register of Abure's dead NEC of the party. A rebel band which Nigeria's highest court, the Supreme Court, comprehensively sacked on April 4, 2025.
3. Mr. Obiora Ifoh and one Abayomi Arabambi, another political rodent in the Julius Abure colony of felony which specializes in candidate fraud, documents forgery, grand thefts and perjury, jointly share the same title of "National Publicity Secretary" in the Supreme Court sacked defunct Julius Abure council of the party; a crass misnomer against Labour Party's constitution.
4. Together, these two creatures constitute the ugliest, ethically depraved noise drums in the political space of contemporary Nigeria.
5. First, why should any Labour Party member be found in the register of a council declared dead and buried by a terminal judgment of the highest court in the land?
6. Secondly, all courts of Nigeria, from the lowest to the apex court, scrutinized, certified and satisfied themselves of Sen. Nenadi Usman's membership of the Labour Party, hence she was recognized as having locus standi on behalf of the party in all suits she filed against the Abure swarm, all of which she won without exception, eternally annulling and obliterating Abure's impersonating group from existence.
7. Next, let's look up Comrade Tony Akeni's membership of the Labour Party and his leadership status in the party. He was also declared by Obiora as one not in their dead council's membership register.
8. For several years before 2010, the Labour Party chapter of Delta state was proscribed by the National Executive Council (NEC) of the party's then national chairman, Chief (Barr.) Dan Nwanyanwu and late Alhaji A.A. Salaam, then National Secretary. The Nwanyanwu NEC held that the shutting down of the party in Delta was because of rogue sellout of elections to the PDP dynasty of then Governor James Ibori and later Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan.
9. On June 12, 2010, remnant stakeholders of the disbanded Delta state LP led a delegation to me (Tony Akeni) in Benin as a Labour Party stalwart of the South-South states who was recommended to them for my reach across the party. The Delta LP delegation, led by Mr. Emeka Nkwaola of the Asaba textile union and comprising one Mr. Emmanuel Emuakpodje, Pastor Tracy Agol and others, had come to entreat me to lead them to Chief Dan Nwanyanwu to plead a case for lifting the suspension of the Delta state Labour Party chapter in order to enable them participate in elections in Delta state.
10. This later came to include the Delta state governorship re-run election of February 6, 2011, after Justice Monica Dongban-Mensem, who was the Chief Judge of the Appeal Court Benin, in a seismic judgment that shook the country, sacked Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan for electoral transgressions in the 2007 governorship election of Delta state. Justice Monica is presently the President of the Appeal Court of Nigeria, Abuja.
11. On June 12, 2010, I was in a June 12 celebration podium at the centre of a sea of music fiesta crowds at Museum Ground, King's Square, Ring Road, Benin City, with Dr. Osagie Obayuwana, performing musicians Majek Fashek and Orits Wiliki, Apostle Comrade Paul Oyarenua and other dignitaries when the Emeka Nkwaola delegation from Delta state entreated me to a side canopy to explain their predicaments and entreaty to approach National Chairman Chief Dan Nwanyanwu to unproscribe Delta Labour Party.
12. I was a co-coordinator of the June 12 rally in my capacity as Director of Mobilization of Nigerians United for Democracy (NUD), whose national leader was legal luminary Femi Falana (now SAN). Dr. Obayuwana was our state leader of the NUD, while Apostle Comrade Paul Oyarenua was our Edo state chapter chairman.
13. Arriving Abuja the following week, the late Alhaji A.A. Salaam, then the national secretary of Labour Party, received my delegation and heralded us to the front of Chief Dan Nwanyanwu. The meeting which started with awkward, high octave hostility ended with roaring success after my intense presentation of a case for Delta LP's restoration.
14. After my presentation and resolution of the mission, I, in that same occasion, presented to National Chairman Chief Dan Nwanyanwu and his NEC a written proposal for the establishment of a "Labour University" by the Labour Party and its NLC founding institution.
15. Chief Nwanyanwu enthusiastically received the proposal with the opening words: "Ideas rule the world." He went on to narrate that while he was a struggling young man fresh out of school and used to travel by "luxurious buses" from the east to Lagos, he experienced how an entire jumbo bus would be stopped by pressed passengers to stop in the middle of nowhere, and passengers would run into the bush to relieve themselves.
16. Nwanyanwu said he afterwards at some forums suggested that toilet compartments should be built into luxurious buses. He narrated that a few years later, to his pleasant surprise, the first set of luxurious buses fitted with toilet closets arrived Nigeria. He concluded that my idea of a "Labour University for less privileged Nigeria workers and Nigerians in general" could see the light of day some day just like his closet idea in luxurious buses.
17. After the Abuja delegation, Emeka Nkwaola of Imo state became the Delta state chairman of Labour Party, Emmanuel Emuakpodje of Kokori town, Delta Central, the state secretary, Emmanuel Amalokwe of Obiarukwu, Delta North, the organizing secretary and I, from Isoko nation, Delta South, the Delta state Labour Party publicity secretary, amongst others. Chief Dan Nwanyanwu and other persons mentioned above except A.A. Salaam and Majek Fashek are still alive to confirm this report.
18. Beyond the successful restoration of the Delta state LP chapter by Chief Nwanyanwu's NEC, in order to expand the nationwide membership base of Labour Party at the time, I developed a membership recruitment scheme to boost the size and personality roll-call of the Labour Party in Delta state in particular and Nigeria in general. This culminated in my leading personality recruitment engagements and delegations to frontline Delta personalities such as Prof. Pat Utomi in Lagos, Barr. Victor Odebala of Sapele, the late veteran labour leader Chief Frank Kokori, also in Lagos, and other non-Deltans who included Cross River state former governor, Mr. Donald Duke, in his office at Victoria Island, Lagos.
19. Earlier, when Prof. Pat Utomi visited my kingdom of Ozoro in 2007 with his ADC presidential campaign train and was received in the home of 2nd Republic deputy Speaker of defunct Bendel State and 3rd Republic Senator, late Sen. Francis "Spanner" Okpozo, I, being a double-barrel prince of the kingdom, was by Sen. Okpozo's side to receive and hear Utomi on behalf of our palace political elite.
20. Earlier in 2006 when the brilliant late Sen. Pius Ewherido, a former deputy Speaker of Delta state, came to Ozoro kingdom with his campaign entourage to sell his Delta governorship aspiration and Sen. Okpozo also received him on behalf of our kingdom, I was also delegated to receive him as observer on behalf of Ewherido's friends and associates of Ozoro kingdom. Pius attended Notre Dame College (NDC) Ozoro as a kid and had many friends and well-wishers in our kingdom. We were looking to convert him to the Labour Party if PDP missed him as their candidate.
21. In the 2010 meeting with Chief Kokori in his home in Lagos, he addressed us on a wide range of issues from my entreaty of him to join the Labour Party as a veteran labour doyen, his arrest, torture and gulag travails during the June 12 struggle under tyrant Abacha to Chief Great Ogboru's contest-and-run-away perpetual governorship syndrome. You could feel intimately all over the war-tested labour veteran a traffic of exhaustion from moral betrayals and the agony of a loving one-woman man as he pointed upstairs over our heads, where he nursed his cherished wife who, he told us, had been bedridden for years. Chief Kokori concluded that day, "I don't have the energy to do this anymore. But maybe, for one last time because of your delegation, I will think over it."
22. That one last time made us to see him again, thin and bone weary, in Chief Ogboru's re-run governorship rally at Ughelli in 2011. He died a dozen years later on December 7, 2023 at the age of 80.
23. Except late Chief Frank Kokori, Sen. Francis Okpozo and Sen. Pius Ewherido, all the persons mentioned above, fortunately, are alive. Go and verify, as Peter Obi would say.
24. In 2010, over fifteen years ago to the day, Julius Abure, Obiora Ifoh's master and saviour of his political universe, was a blurred mere dot in the circle of Labour Party affairs, to borrow Muhammadu Buhari's phrase; an unknown background shadow working as a postal clerk in NIPOST, Edo state, while loitering somewhere in the west Arabambi was in the wilderness of nowhere. Neither was anywhere near the pedestal of my already region-wide influence ambit, much less national activity status in the Labour Party.
25. Quite ahead of me in LP affairs then were the irrepressible Veteran Comrade Lawson Osagie. Side by side Pa Victor Aguebor, Pa Irowa, Chief Patrick Osagie Eholor (Ultimate Equals) and Pa Gabano, I held the Labour Party media trumpet in the background during the years of Adams Oshiomhole as governor of Edo state.
26. I was among the backroom influencers of the party when we organized and coordinated the Edo state Labour Party congress at Gabano Hotel, near Uniben, which brought Bishop Samuel Omede to office as Edo state LP chairman. Afterwards, from the dim backyards of his NIPOST employment Julius Abure clawed, scrambled and spidered his way into the spot of state secretary in Bishop Omede's state council of the Labour Party.
27. Given the above, if these creatures, Obiora Ifoh and Abayomi Arabambi, were well brought up growing up, they would lie lizard flat on their bellies to greet me in obeisance wherever they meet me. Not interrogate my membership of the Labour Party. Unfortunately, it is apparent they were not.
*Hold Up. Stand Up for Peter Obi*
28. About 20years ago, I read the editorial of a Tanzanian newspaper that shook me to my bones from the acid contempt, even hate, with which many African nations see Nigeria and our country's internal politics.
29. It stated that Nigeria was one of the most absurd countries in the world where its citizens reduce their best to their lowest worst. Citing the life and times of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to exemplify the point, the Tanzanian newspaper said Nigeria had achieved the unbelievable feat of reducing the great Nnamdi Azikiwe from "Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha."
30. Together, African countries and the rest of the world are watching again. How, while many Nigerians who are not Igbos are dying for Obi's cause, while fellow Ndigbo themselves such as Obiorah Ifoh, Clement Ojukwu, Joe Igbokwe, Minister David Umahi, Governor Charles Soludo, Governor Emmanuel Mbah, former governor Orji Uzor Kalu, the loquacious and delirious National Assembly Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, Prisoner Ike Ekweremadu, similar doppelgangers or evil twins of the Igbo nation and sections of stomach infrastructure Ohaneze leadership have been going about like drunken sailors in a beach party recklessly endorsing Tinubu for 2027.
31. With opium abandon, some like Obiorah Ifoh, Clement Ojukwu and Benjamin Kalu have, both overtly and covertly, set out to reduce the extraordinary generational gem Nigerians of all tribes have found in the person of Peter Obi from "Obi Nwanne of Africa" to "PO of Agulu village," in the same manner their political ancestors cornered, narrowed and minimized Azikiwe from Zik of Africa to Owelle of Onitsha.
32. Great Nigerians like Femi Falana, Dele Farotimi, David Hundeyin (South-West), Yunusa Tanko, Haruna Goro, Nana Kazaure (North), Deacon Chris Iyovwaye, Smart Madu Ajaja, Aisha Yesufu, Magnus Oraka, Peter Akah (Niger Delta South-South), Reginald Nnorom, Precious Oruche "Mama Pee" (South-East) and many others have erased crooked old boundaries in Nigeria's political topography to prove that Nigeria can be one huge, united country and Africa's democratic powerhouse.
33. Peter Obi's last best chance and the South-East's next best chance for a long time at the Presidency of Nigeria is 2027. If in 2027 Igbo nation allowed Igbo political lice succeed to wreck Peter Obi's presidency bid while other Nigerians who are not Igbo are laying down their lives for a Peter Obi Igbo Presidency, let no Igbo person anywhere under the sun, elite or commoner, say Nigerians do not love the Igbos. It will be more correct, almost forever after, to say that Igbos do not love themselves. From 2027, it will officially become a universal maxim, signed and sealed by the Igbos themselves, that the Igbos love what is in their individual pocket and stomach more than their collective posterity and future.
34. In our time, we must reject the poison of these Ndigbo wolves against Peter Obi's person and presidential project. We must reject the Tanzanian curse and stand up for Peter Obi in 2027, provided he stands up for himself by filtering out and disbanding his choristers of misleading praise singers, and rising above sycophancy indulgence to pillar his cause with genuine trench soldiers who tell him the truth that will lead to his victory.
35. Peter Obi and our Labour Party NEC must rise with a sense of urgency to launch confidence building agenda of actions and activities that will encourage and strengthen our party's remaining few loyal elected members of the National Assembly and State Houses of Assembly across the country. No effort should be spared to inspire them to remain true to the PO 2027 presidency project.
36. In case Peter Obi and the Sen. Nenadi council are not adequately aware, currently these brave steadfast loyalists of our party are like forlorn IDP orphans in the National Assembly and various State Houses of Assembly.
37. They tip-toe about their daily activities within the National Assembly and State Assembly complexes to survive daily pressures on them to defect to the ruling APC and other ruling parties in various states.
38. They are under constant psychological onslaught of Tinubu's conquest storms under Senate President Godswill Akpabio's and Speaker Tajudeen Abbas' brinkmanship; an ancient Roman triumvirate determined to ensure Tinubu's wholesale state capture of Nigeria into a one-party banana pseudo-democracy. The time for all true Labour Party faithfuls to rally round them is now before it's too late.
God bless and keep us all, as many as will continue to stand tall by the truth and refuse to bow to Nigeria's god of cash-out corruption and political cash crops of compromised politics.
*Tony Akeni Le Moin*
Labour Party National Publicity Secretary (Interim)
