By PERPETUA ONUEGBU

The national leadership of Labour Party has extended the ongoing registration and revalidation exercise by the party to May.

The party’s National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh, made this known in a statement issued on Thursday in Abuja.

Ifoh quoted the party’s National Chairman, Julius Abure, as saying after the meeting of the National Working Committee (NWC) that LP congresses across the wards, local governments and states would hold between June and July.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the validation exercise was supposed to have ended on Jan. 31.

NAN also reports that the ward congresses were supposed to have been held between February and March.

The party had earlier launched an online membership registration and validation application, as part of efforts to exceed a membership size of 20 million before the 2027 general elections.

Abure also pledged to ensure a free, fair and credible exercise during the forthcoming governorship primaries in Anambra.

According to him, Nigeria will get better only when a fair and honest leadership recruitment process is enthroned.

Abure also dismissed the allegation that the Labour Party was working for another political party, saying that the party had grown to be one of the largest political parties in the country.

“I want to reassure our members in Anambra State that as it is usual with our party, our primaries and congresses will be free, fair and credible.

“It has been our ideology and philosophy in this party that we must do things differently because you can’t adopt a similar approach and expect a different result.

” If you must get a different result, it means your approach must be different. And therefore, for us in Labour Party, it is our desire to do things differently.

“This is because we believe that it is only where there is internal party democracy, where there is competition, where there is no godfatherism, that the best of the bests can emerge from such process.

“And we believe that when you have the best emerging from political parties, that is when you will have the best hands that will handle the affairs of the country.

“I believe we have not had our best to handle the affairs of the country and that is why we have the challenges in governance today in Nigeria,” he said. (NAN)