The National Chairman of the Labour Party, Nenadi Usman, has revealed some of the major reasons the party failed in the 2023 presidential election.
The LP scribe said the party was not able to defend its
claim of victory in court because it failed to make use of its numerical
advantage, which comes from the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade
Union Congress, TUC.
The party’s Chairman spoke at a one-day high-level strategic
multi-level stakeholders summit, themed ‘Reuniting the Labour Party Family:
consolidating strength for sustainable political impact’ held at the party’s
national Secretariat in Abuja on Wednesday.
The meeting was held in collaboration with the Nigeria
Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC.
Nenadi said she had informed leadership of the organised
Labour that the basics of having a successful political party is being able to
successfully register members right from the grassroots.
She noted that no political party can boast of being
successful without knowing who their members are, where they are and how many
they are, adding that this was what played out in the 2023 election.
According to her, “the fact that we did not use these two
institutions[the NLC and TUC] to anchor the party very firmly at the grassroots
led us to the problems where we are.
“And when other political parties are quarrelling, asking if
there’s going to be IREV and electronic transmission or no electronics
transmission, that was not our problem. Our problem is to ensure that we
register our members right from the grassroots using the major institutions
that are the foundation of the Labour Party, the NLC, TUC and all the unions.
“If we can use them to register our members right from the
Polling Unit then we know we are on the way to success because without having
our people registered and we have the data we know where they are and can use
them as Polling Unit agents when elections come.
“When people are saying there is glitch there’s no glitch
and that it must be electronic transmission of results, for me I think the
basic foundation is what we are doing today, getting to make sure that our
members are all registered and that we know every Polling Unit, that we have
that important document called form EC8, because if you talk and say you can do
without that form that is not true you cannot.
“In 2023, when the Labour Party went to court to prove their
case because they didn’t use the unions to get that form from every Polling
Unit, they couldn’t really prove the number of votes that we clearly had.
“No structure can ever be built without a foundation. In
2023 we were mocked that we didn’t really have a structure and we didn’t have a
structure because we did not utilize that which we had. For now, it’s time for
us to open our eyes. Shine our eyes and say we are going to do this.
“No Polling Unit in this country where you go to, that you
don’t have either a serving worker or a retired worker, we are all over. But if
we had been called upon in 2023, I want to assure you that even without
payment, our members would have come out, they would have stood at the Polling
Units, they would have watched our votes counted, they would have signed the
form EC8 and collected it and would have used it to show in court that we
really won or did not win the election.
“So this is another opportunity and we are not going to play
with it. And as I said, when we went, sat with TUC and NLC and said we have a
problem, how do we do this? They said that’s simple, let’s just do it. Let’s
put our members together.”
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