“We won’t boycott 2027 elections” – Labour Party declares amid threats by IPAC
The Labour Party (LP) says it has no plan to boycott the 2027 general election amid rumours of threats by some political parties not to participate due to recently passed Electoral Act.
Nenadi Usman, interim national chairman of the party, made this known on Saturday on the sidelines of the unveiling of the party’s e-registration portal in Abuja.
Usman said the party is focused on addressing lapses that undermined its performance in the 2023 election.
Her remarks follow threats by the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) to mobilise political parties to boycott the 2027 polls if provisions in the Electoral Act 2026 (Amendment) are not reviewed.
Usman said the Labour Party would not adopt a “bandwagon” approach, adding that each political party faces different challenges.
Her words: “Every political party has its peculiarities. What bothers another political party may not be what is bothering the Labour Party at the moment.
“For example, you talked about the issue of iREV. Whether you are transmitting results live or not was not even something we were worried about. Our worry was the ability to have polling agents in every polling unit in Nigeria.”
Usman said the Labour Party faced challenges presenting documentary evidence in court after the 2023 presidential election, adding that the party lacked agents across all polling units nationwide.
She said: “If you remember, in 2023, when we claimed that we won the election, when it was time for us to print out our evidence in court, we could not.
“I’m sure you know the reason. We didn’t have agents in all the polling units. That important Form EC8A, we didn’t have people in every polling unit signing and bringing it out for us to use as proof that we actually got what we said we had.”
Usman said the party is now focused on strengthening its grassroots structure, noting that the aim is to ensure the party has representatives at every polling unit before the next election.
Her words: “So right now, what we are doing is that we don’t want to depend on the iREV and say that we will not work on our grassroots support.
“We don’t just depend on the iREV to collate results on our behalf. No, we are not going to repeat the 2023 mistake.”
Usman said the party is also reintegrating labour unions into its operations, adding that the exclusion of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) weakened the party’s field operations in 2023.
She said: “What happened before was that the institutional members of our great party, the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress were completely blocked out.
“And their members all over the country were not even allowed to help at the polling units. Nobody invited them.
“But now that we have come to correct that error and have our teeming members in the unions working together with us, I believe that we are going to have people signing the Form EC8A. And with that, we will go very far.”
Usman said the party will prioritise documentation of election results, adding that it would strengthen the party’s legal position in the event of disputes.
Her words: “We will not shirk our responsibility of having agents in polling units and just say we want to depend on iREV.
“We will not do that again. We are going to have our papers properly documented so that if anything goes wrong, we can produce them in court and do what we were unable to do in 2023. I think that is our ball game for now.
“In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say is that different political parties have different issues bothering them. For us, we will face what is bothering us and try to fix it so that, by 2027, we will be a better party.
“If any political party feels that they are so aggrieved and do not want to participate come 2027, honestly, we are not going to stop them. But we will not adopt a bandwagon effect because we are the workers’ party.”
