Labour Party Caucus Leader Mocks Abure over Recent NEC, Declares It’s Laughable

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

Leader of the Labour Party caucus in the House of Representatives, Hon. Victor Ogene, has mocked the party’s embattled factional chairman, Julius Abure, over his claim that he, Ogene has been removed from his position as caucus leader.

Ogene spoke following the resolutions adopted by the Abure-led National Executive Committee, NEC which among others warned party leaders, Peter Obi and Governor Alex Otti of Abia State, against their involvement in summoning a rival NEC meeting for Wednesday.

Ogene in the resolution was also dismissed from his position, a development that the caucus leader mocked in an interview with news men.

While affirming that Abure lacked legal platform to take any decision on Labour Party affairs upon the Supreme Court judgment that affirmed that his tenure had expired, Ogene also ridiculed the claim that he had been sacked as caucus leader.

Mocking Abure, he said: “He does not know that he who hires can fire. Did Abure hire me as caucus leader? The answer is no. I was elected by a college of my colleagues.

“We stood for election, three of us and by the grace of my colleagues, I won that election. My colleagues have not lost confidence in me.

Speaking to the low profile attendees at his NEC meeting, Ogene said: “Ask Abure how many House of Representatives members attended his so-called illegal NEC meeting?

“That will solve the problem. Let me know if he had more than four of my members in that meeting then he has the moral high ground to be talking.

“But I know that out of 28 of us in Labour Party today he will not have more than four and I don’t see how four will lead 24.

“Another point is that on Wednesday at the Transcorp Hilton, the statutory members of NEC who the Supreme Court has imposed on the duty of rescuing the party will be holding a meeting concurrently with an enlarged stakeholders’ meeting.”

Ogene, who tasked the media to watch out for the presence of reputable leaders of the party at the Wednesday NEC meeting, further mocked Abure over his assertion that he should return the party’s funds in his custody.

“Abure is directing himself to handover the money of the caucus but in his tomfoolery that I am not the treasurer of the caucus and that I do not hold one penny of the funds of the party or the caucus. We have funds, yes, but it does not belong to Abure, it belongs to the caucus,” he said.