Politicians are lobbying to be our presidential candidate —Abdulsalam, Labour Party’s factional chairman

A factional national chairman of Labour Party, Alhaji Abdulkadir Abdulsalam, in this interview by DAPO FALADE, speaks on next year’s general election and also states his position on a recent claim by Dr Mike Omotosho to the chairmanship seat of the party.

The Labour Party has been bedevilled by factionalisation crisis bothering on the chairmanship seat of the party. How can it be resolved?

First and foremost, thank you for this question. However, I can assure you that there is no factionalisation whatsoever within the party; there is no division and there is no in-fighting within the Labour Party. The party remains one indivisible entity…

How will you reconcile this assertion of yours with the claim by Dr Mike Omotosho that he is the authentic national chairman of the party, the same position you are laying claim to?

This Dr Omotosho of a man is not a member of the Labour Party. I was once the national secretary of the party and today, by the grace of God, I am its national chairman. By virtue of these two positions, I will know who is our member is and who is not our member. What I will want you to observe is that some moneybags want to join the party at this critical and crucial time and that is where Omotosho emerged. He wants to play the spoiler, but certainly we don’t have any crisis in our party. You can confirm my position at the national secretariat of our party at 89, Oke-Agbe Street, Off Ladoke Akintola Boulevard, Abuja. I have been in the office all through and through.

It is almost four months now that they said they had taken over. You don’t say you will unilaterally call for a national convention. Our party’s constitution is very clear on this matter. Nobody has the right to call for a national convention; no organ of the party calls for a national convention without the knowledge of the national chairman. I must make it clear: the constitution said, to remove the chairman, the chairman himself will call for a national convention for that purpose. I didn’t call for that convention.

He wrote a letter to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that, in consultation with me, they were holding a convention. He wrote to the police command in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) that the police, in consultation with me, should come and provide security. Unknown to the INEC and the police, I was not aware of any convention. There was no meeting where I gave such information. I am alive and I am around. Why should I say go and call a convention? I am here in Abuja; I didn’t go anywhere. And, for God’s sake, I cannot imagine myself calling for a convention in a midnight.

But what you said is contrary to his claim that the convention was held on October 3, 2017 after he was invited to a meeting by the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) and the National Executive Council (NEC)…

On my honour, there was no such meeting. Prior to that their so-called convention, I learnt that some people had gathered together and held a meeting. On September 12, I wrote to INEC that it should disregard any meeting by any organ of the party because I am not authorizing any meeting to be held. I had earlier written to INEC that I am not going to authorize, consent or be privy to any meeting of any organ of the party. The letter was acknowledged by INEC on September 13. So, how can they say INEC was at their convention? You see, they are telling the public a lot of lies.

Apart from that, I called INEC to ask if it got my letter and the commission said it was in possession of my letter. So, for INEC to be present at their so-called convention, it only wanted to establish whether the convention called was in conformity with the constitution of the Labour Party or not. And INEC discovered that it was not in conformity with our party’s constitution. And when I reported to the Commissioner of Police, FCT, he showed me a letter in which it was stated that I wrote a letter calling for a convention. But I told him I didn’t write any letter to that effect; there was forgery all through and through. You can confirm what I am saying from INEC and the Police Command, FCT.

Dr Omotosho also claimed that the party was consumed by disunity, mismanagement and mediocrity, under your leadership. What is your reaction to this?

Let me make it clear to you now that this man is not a member of the Labour Party. He contested for the governorship election in Kwara State on the platform of the party in 2015. He could not pay for the ordinary nomination form, but we gave him the go ahead. You can confirm this from our former national secretary, Barrister Kayode Ajulo who then objected that we were not going to give him our party as the platform to use to contest for an election without paying. But I told Ajulo that the gentlemen who followed him to plead have signed an undertaking and so, we should give Omotosho the benefit of doubt. Omotosho contested, but he failed woefully in Kwara State and since then, he has moved into the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Since then, we have never related with him. He’s not our member and I am saying this on my honour.

He referred to you as a former national chairman of the party who emerged after a convention held in Akure, Ondo State in 2014. What is the tenure of your chairmanship and when are you supposed to have another convention?

My tenure is four years and I have spent three years. Within those three years, I have moved the national secretariat of the party from an obscured market place to a well-deserved and more secured place. Secondly, under my chairmanship, I produced members of the House of Assembly in Oyo, Delta, Benue and Bayelsa states. I also produced a senator who recently defected into the All Progressives Congress (APC). So, under my leadership for the past three years, we are doing well. People have heard about us and they are relating with us and we have been relating with the media cordially. So, how can Omotosho, who is not a member of our party, now come and claim he is the chairman of the party?

He also accused your leadership of corruption and forgery and that he is taking up the matter, following the due process. What is your reaction to this allegation?

Go to INEC, we have submitted our audited accounts, up to 2016, to the commission. We are auditing that of 2017 now. So, as somebody who is not a member of our party, how could he know that the chairman has embezzled or not embezzled any money? I am the party chairman today and I am the one who can quote the financial document of the party. He went to the police and told them lies. The police discovered that he was telling lie. He went to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and told them lies. They discovered that it was a blatant lie.

But he must have collaborated with and used some other members of the party to conduct the convention which he claimed produced him as the national chairman…

You see, in the Labour Party, we don’t have money to play around with. The few people he got were either retirees or some people in that category. How can national officer of the party who, because of a mere N50,000, leave Ondo State and come to Abuja to join a kangaroo convention? Apart from that, almost all the other people he used are hired hands who are in abundance in Abuja here. If you are conversant with Abuja, you will know that it is easy to hire people to vote. So, he didn’t get solid and responsible members of the party on his side. Most importantly, go to the INEC website to confirm who the Labour Party chairman is. Many people who are interested in the affairs of the party have been to the INEC website to confirm who the chairman of the party is. I remain the national chairman of the Labour Party. INEC knows what it is doing.

When they did their kangaroo convention, it was a day to our stakeholders’ meeting with INEC. This was a meeting where the chairmen and secretaries of all political parties will be meeting with the national electoral body. They brought Omotosho to the venue of the meeting, but INEC drove him away; he and members of his team were not allowed to enter. So, what are they talking about? Four months have passed, if truly the convention was correct and legal, why did they not go to court since all this time to claim their mandate, if they genuinely have one? And Omotosho who claimed to have been elected last October, is he going to stay for just one year in office? Or is he going to spend four years in office? I have four deputy chairmen, but they didn’t find any of them competent or capable enough to take over from me. Rather, they went and put an outsider who is not a member of the party there. They paid hotel bills for three weeks and brought people from everywhere and paid them. Where did they get the money from if not from an outsider who wanted to take over the party through the backdoor?

But the Labour Party has a philosophy: it is owned by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). What is the pedigree of these people who want to take over the party? NLC has been telling them in an unmistakable term that the party is not for sale; that it is not a party for the moneybags and that they should steer clear. Still, they went ahead and see what they did, but I can understand where we are coming from.

Don’t you think the crisis can create confusion among your party members and thus affect the party during the next elections?

The party members, across all the states of the federation, know who the national chairman of the Labour Party is. All over the local government areas, they know who the chairman of the party is. In the last four months, we have conducted four state congresses. I am coming to the South West to conduct another one. The public and particularly our people and party members know the true position of things. You cannot remove the chairman of a political party through the market; you cannot remove the chairman of a political party through the backyard. You must follow due process; you must follow the guidelines of INEC and you must follow the Electoral Act and you must follow, particularly, the constitution of the party. The INEC chairman, a responsible gentleman, Professor Mahmoud, has consistently been saying all party activities must be in strict adherence to the constitution of the party. I did not call any meeting and the position of the constitution is clear that I must call meeting for the sake of removal from office.

2019 is around the corner, how prepared is Labour Party and are you adopting a presidential candidate as it is the tradition of the party?

As I had earlier told you, we are conducting state congresses. Activities are going on in our party. We don’t administer the affairs of the party through the media. We administer party on the basis of reality and practicality.

We are not adopting any particular candidate from any political party. Presidential aspirants have been coming to us. One came from the East, recently. He said he was endorsed by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo. One came from Lagos and another one from Ondo State. We are meeting very soon. But we are not adopting any candidate because who are we going to adopt? Is it President Muhammadu Buhari who, and his party, APC, have failed woefully? Or is it a candidate from PDP, a party which wasted our time and resources for 16 years? We are going to be on our own. We are a sellable political party and we are going to tell the public that we have an ideology of social democracy and we have a human face, respecting the fundamental human rights as espoused and practised by Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

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