By Achile Danjuma
In a significant move signalling a major political realignment, the Labour Party (LP) and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) have announced plans to consolidate their partnership in preparation for the 2027 general elections.
At the heart of this renewed strategy is a pledge to mobilise the nation’s workforce, tasking them to serve as polling unit agents to protect the party’s votes. This decision was the key outcome of a one-day strategic stakeholders’ summit held in Abuja.
The summit brought together party leaders and organised labour representatives, who resolved to intensify membership registration and validation drives. The plan is to leverage the extensive network of labour unions as the foundational structure for the party’s grassroots mobilisation efforts.
This strategic pivot is a direct response to the hard lessons learned from the 2023 presidential election and the subsequent legal challenges. A central grievance for the party was the controversy surrounding the electronic transmission of results and the difficulty in obtaining Form EC8As—the official polling unit result sheets crucial for substantiating legal petitions.
Party leaders acknowledged that a lack of coordinated grassroots organisation and a structured network to retrieve these result sheets significantly hampered their case at the election tribunal.
In the 2023 contest, the LP’s Peter Obi, campaigning as a political outsider, galvanised a wave of young and first-time voters to secure a third-place finish. He was behind the winner, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Addressing stakeholders at the summit, the party’s acting National Chairman, Nenadi Usman, emphasised the need for a robust, institutional foundation.
“When the LP National Working Committee approached the leadership of the NLC and the TUC, we made it clear that the bedrock of any political party is knowing its membership from the grassroots up,” Usman stated. “Without a clear understanding of who our members are and where they come from, effective planning is impossible. Our experience in the 2023 election showed us that failing to firmly anchor the party with these two institutions at the grassroots level was the root of the challenges we faced.”