A former presidential aspirant, Professor Pat Utomi says said the Labour Party (LP) is not in the mould of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) that change their national leadership like napkins.
Utomi, who is also the convener of a pressure group called the Big Tent, as well as the founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership, in a piece titled: The Labours of healing a Nation, said journalists had been asking him to speak on the simmering leadership crisis in the LP, which has pitched the national chairman, Mr Julius Akure and the president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Joe Ajaero.
He said he was looking forward “to a meeting of all desiring to be chairman of the party at a gathering for common purpose conclave,” in order to “relieve many Nigerians anxious that things go well in the House of Labour.”
He warned stakeholders of the LP not to allow the party to be smeared by uncomplimentary narratives that characterise the PDP and the APC in the eyes of the public.
“These days in Nigeria, crisis seems native to political parties. Big trouble is resident in almost every transaction or meeting of our traditional parties. Wahala blooms, as champions of state capture jockey for advantage in a system long divorced from rules.
“But the Labour Party we seek is not a regular Nigerian political party. So to move to the typical narrative on party crisis which has seen PDP and APC humiliate and change chairmen like napkins, is not just to fish in the waters of danger of a single story but to do disservice to the hope we can mend one thing until it is right for the good of all.
“There sure is mending to do in the Labour Party but it nowhere begins to approach the APC/PDP level, whose agents are hard at work making the point ‘they are as bad as us.’
“We must make recompense to those who have suffered the APC way in some errors of judgment by party operatives and be more inclusive. Getting Labour right is beyond politics or business as usual.
He said he often borrowed a joke from a colleague, who describes a university faculty as a collection of anarchists united by a common car park.
Therefore, he submitted that a typical political party meeting in the country is a “gathering of confusionists, the amoral and immoral who make back-biting, fake news mongering and treachery such a staple that a car park is unable to unite them.”
He noted that it is sad that we have made such continuous exhibition of lack of character to be part of the so-called politics.
“This is a major reason the country is currently prostrate because this ‘politics’ has triumphed over reason as self love has blinded many to the damage of today’s ‘wins’ from gaming the system inflict on their families’ own future interests.
He said Nigerians desperately need a party rooted in the people and a culture of ideas and service, a vacuum, he declared that the Labour Party was designed to fill and usher a new dawn.
“But the same agents of confusion are again at work trying to establish that the lowest common denominator in public life is Naira sharing by scoundrels with no flow of patriotism in their veins.
“Before you can say haba, they are flying press statements accusing everyone of something. Why do people not try to talk or investigate things before they go wide and wild in social media?
“The first thing we must do to organise a path to truth and future progress towards enabling the role the Labour Party has to play in the Nigerian resurgence is to cause a cessation of the media wars by those who hold contending perspectives on the way forward,” he said.
While urging all the various camps in the Labour Party to see themselves as stakeholders, Utomi recalled: “The way to go with refocusing Labour Party is for all to remember that whether they came to the table as thoughtful visioners, people accidentally swept along in a tidal wave or just good citizens searching for a way out and forward for their beloved country for which they cried and sorrowed, when the Obedient bandwagon suddenly pulled up, all are now stakeholders in the Nigeria rescue mission.
“That privileged place of being stakeholders in a revolutionary putsch requires of all a sacrificial discipline of contemplating the common good and inclining all to sober discussion.
“In this process, the Labour Unions have to act respecting the view from the regulators that their place at the table is not a matter of who owns but as people with a duty to working people, articulates of their claim in the authoritative allocation of values which they hold up with massive mobilization of voting workers.”
He promised that, “The initiatives for reconciliation we have put underway will begin with this base.
“All must open their minds here with sense for how history will judge them and how their children will remember them. From the Big Tent and its Think Tank, the place at the table has to be in the issues that help determine policy choice and mobilising the population in support of those ideas on how to solve the problems of society.
He disclosed that a portal for the new tribe of Nigerians who commit to a strong work ethic, regard for the dignity of the human person no matter the tongue or faith, will be launched on May 1, on predicated on handshake and embrace between “values highlighted by the New Tribe and policy choices espoused by the Labour Party.”
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