Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President Joe Ajaero has blamed the rift between the organization and the leadership of the Labour Party (LP) on greed and corruption.

Ajaero who traced the emergence of the first Labour Party in Nigeria to 1945 under the leadership of the late Chief Michael Imoudu,said Labour parties all over the world are “owned by the trade unions.”

He said the current leaders of the LP are usurpers.

Citing Mr.Julius Abure,the LP National Chairman as an example,Ajaero said no one ever elected him (Abure) to lead the party.

Ajaero, who spoke in an interview during a visit to the corporate headquarters of THE NATION last Thursday,said:”Ordinarily, if not for greed, corruption, you won’t hear anything.

“ Labour Party all over the world is owned by the trade unions whether the Labour Party in the UK or anywhere else.

“In 2000, at the NLC National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, that was when we decided to have another Labour Party. Then NLC President Adams Oshiomhole tried to advise that we join other parties, and I think we overruled him.

“ But the question then was that if we came up with a Labour Party that the government in power then would not recognise or allow to scale through the registration. So we now came up with the Party for Social Democracy (PSD). That was how we registered the party then. And at the first convention we changed the name to Labour Party. So the issue of ownership wasn’t in doubt.

“The first National Chairman was the President of National Union of Banks, Dan Nwuanyanwu. When he left, because he took the certificate from us to do some verification at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), he brought back the certificate. The certificate is still in my office now.

“The second chairman of the party was Abdulsalami Maku, the then General Secretary of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE). Even the last one, Abure was a State Secretary of the National Union of Post and Telecoms.

“Nobody has been the chairman of that party without being a trade unionist.

“There was no convention for Abure anywhere on earth. He (Abure) was an Assistant Secretary. His president came to beg us then when Dr. Olusegun Mimiko was the Ondo State governor for him to run as Assistant Secretary under Kayode Ajulo, who was then the Secretary of the Labour Party. And when Ajulo left, he started acting.

“ From acting, he now called for a convention in Edo State and he succeeded himself as chairman from the position of Assistant Secretary. And there were three or four deputies. That was how the crisis in the Labour Party started till date.” (The Nation: Text, Excluding Headline)

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