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  • Politics
  • Updated: December 03, 2022

Okupe Enjoying Honourary Citizenship In Labour Party Despite Not Fulfilling Financial Obligations

Okupe Enjoying Honourary Citizenship In Labour Party Despite

Earlier, AllNews Nigeria reported that the Labour Party had punched their weights behind Doyin Okupe, the party's campaign council's Director-General.

He was sacked alongside ten others for alleged non-financial membership status, high-handedness and financial recklessness by the Ogun State Chapter of the party on Thursday.

The general feeling is that serious political parties bank on the financial contributions of their stakeholders worldwide, but Doyin Okupe's case has changed the status quo.

It now means that one can actively be part of a political party without being a diehard follower of its dictates. 

According to the National Secretary of the party, Doyin Okupe, alongside his principal and presidential flagbearer of the party, Peter Obi, is working to rescue Nigeria; and such action as the one taken by the Ogun state chapter of the party would be destructive to the dream. 

But the state chairman of the party, Michael Ashade, said in Abeokuta, the state capital, that Okupe and others breached the Labour Party constitution.

Then who upholds the party constitution if the party's national leadership does not see it that way?

To the national leadership, the sack was sponsored by unscrupulous elements trying to cause a crisis in the party.

There are factions in the labour party

When the gubernatorial candidate of the party, Taofeek Akinwale, appeared on a live radio interview last month, he maintained that the party's presidential candidate met him in the party.

Indeed, there are real-time party members and circumstantial decampees, Doyin Okupe and the party's presidential candidate, Peter Obi, are perfect examples.

No one could tell whether the more, the merrier analogy applies to the party.

Still, a verifiable fact is that there is a splitting element between the already existing members of the party and the new decampees who joined solely because of the presidential candidate.

One faction is preferred to the other

The reason Okupe and the others were suspended from the constituent level of the party is clear. 

Ashade, alongside the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Abayomi Arabambi and the State Secretary, Feyisola Michael, said Okupe ceased to be a party member after he failed to meet the mandatory constitutional requirements to fulfil membership status.

This means that Okupe entered the party like an adopted child who did not fulfil any financial obligation.

Under the party's existence, he is rolling his sleeves but has yet to pay membership dues for the last six months of joining the party.

Politically, Okupe and any other individual enjoying such freedom, whether in the Labour Party or any other one, does not fit to be members of the party talkless of holding an administrative position like the DG of the Presidential Campaign Council.

But instead of the national leadership to soften the pedal, it threw its full support for Okupe and branded those who stood by the constitution of the party as saboteurs.

The double standard

That Doyin Okupe has not come out to refute the claims that he had failed to pay the party dues spell two things:

He had violated article 19(3) of the Labour Party constitutional provision, and his membership in the party is questionable. 

He is also not ready to bow to the party in his state because he thinks what he offers the party at present supersedes the constitution.

Simply put, he is not working for the party but for the candidate. 

This is unadvisable following the presidential candidate's moral endorsement of the PDP gubernatorial candidate in Rivers State.

Though he apologised afterwards, there is clearly no synergy between the president and other dreams in the party.

The Labour Party is moving forward

The state chapter of the party challenged Dr Doyin Okupe to provide evidence of any payment in respect of membership dues, which he had not provided. 

That the national leadership of the party did not address any of the salient ideals raised by the party but stood firm with an individual who trampled upon important party rules but went scot-free could be detrimental to the sustenance of the party in no distant future.
 

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