The Labour Party and the Nigeria Labour Congress on Wednesday signalled a major grassroots realignment ahead of the 2027 general elections.
They also unveiled plans to mobilise workers across the country as polling unit agents to safeguard the party’s votes.
The decision was made at a one-day strategic multi-level stakeholders’ summit of the Labour Party, held in Abuja.
At the summit, party leaders and organised labour representatives resolved to deepen membership registration and validation, using union structures as the backbone of the party’s grassroots operations.
The renewed strategy is grounded in the party’s experience from the 2023 presidential election and the subsequent legal battle.
The LP presidential candidate in 2023, Peter Obi, had filed a petition challenging the outcome of the disputed presidential poll won by the ruling All Progressives Congress.
Obi, who campaigned as a political outsider and galvanised many young and first-time voters, came third in the election, behind eventual winner, Bola Tinubu of the APC and the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party finished fourth, ahead of 14 other candidates.
At the heart of the Labour Party’s post-election grievance were disputes over the electronic transmission of results and the collection of Form EC8A, the official polling unit result sheet required to substantiate claims in court.
Party leaders have repeatedly argued that inadequate grassroots coordination and the failure to deploy a structured network to retrieve result sheets from polling units weakened their case at the tribunal.
Addressing stakeholders at Wednesday’s summit, the acting LP national chairman, Nenadi Usman, said the party had learnt hard lessons and must now build a formidable structure anchored on labour institutions.
She said, “When the LP National Working Committee approached the NLC and the TUC leaderships, we told them that the basics of a political party are being able to successfully register your members right from the grassroots.
“But without knowing who your members are or where they hail from, you can never plan well.
“And we have seen that in the 2023 election, the fact that we did not use these two institutions to anchor the party very firmly at the grassroots led us to the problems we had.
“Our problem is to ensure that we register our members right from the grassroots using the major institutions that are the foundation of the Labour Party, the NLC, the TUC and all the unions.
“If we can use them to register our members right from the polling unit, then we know we are on the way to success.”
The former minister stressed the need for the party to build a reliable membership database and deploy registered members as polling unit agents during elections to prevent disputes over the electronic transmission of results.
Central to this plan, she said, was the systematic collection of Form EC8A at every polling unit, describing the document as indispensable to defending the party’s votes.
“We need to have our people registered in our data and should use them as polling unit agents when elections come to avoid talks about a glitch or no glitch during electronic transmission. We all saw what happened.
“So, I think the basic foundation is what we are doing today, getting to ensure our members are registered so that henceforth we should start taking record of that important document, Form EC8A, at every polling unit. We cannot do without that form.
“In 2023, when the Labour Party went to court to prove their case, because they didn’t use the unions to get the Form EC8A from every polling unit, they couldn’t really prove the number of votes that we claimed we had,” she said.
Reflecting on the 2023 elections, she urged state chairmen and union leaders to return home from the summit with clear strategies for mass membership registration, emphasising that no political structure could succeed without a solid foundation.
“So I want to plead with every one of you (state chairmen and unionists) that after we have put our heads together at this technical session, you should come up with the ideal way to approach our members for registration.
“This is because no structure can ever be built without a foundation.
“In 2023, we were mocked for not having a structure. We didn’t have it because we did not utilise what we had.
“Now, it’s time for us to shine our eyes, use our structure and show that we have the largest structure any political party can have in Nigeria.
“There is no polling unit in this country where you will go that we don’t have either a serving or a retired worker. We are all over the place.
“If we had been called upon in 2023, I want to assure you that even without payment, our members would have come out, stood at the polling units and watched our votes being counted.
“They would have signed and collected all the EC8A Forms, and we would have used them to show that we really won the election,” Usman lamented.
Also speaking, Acting Chairman of the NLC Political Commission, Stephen Okoro, traced the ideological roots of the party to the labour movement, describing the renewed collaboration as a “redemption” of its founding vision.
He said, “We are happy that one of the longest struggles for the party has brought all of us to this new epoch where workers are no longer treated as strangers in their own house.
“We will work with our party leaders to pursue and achieve the dreams of the founding fathers and mothers of the Labour Party.
“We pledge our commitment to the national membership registrations and validation exercise. We will mobilise workers in their millions, not only as members of the Labour Party, but as the duty bearers of the ideological dictates of the party.
“As we engage ourselves through this very important platform, I urge all our members, especially the leadership of the state political committees, to brace up to the challenges ahead. No labour, no food.”
Abia State Governor, Dr Alex Otti, represented by the Deputy Governor, Ikechukwu Emetu, said unity and internal cohesion would determine the party’s electoral fortunes in 2027.
“Politics, like governance, thrives on unity of purpose. The strength of any political movement lies not merely in numbers, but in cohesion, clarity of vision, discipline, and shared conviction.
“Reuniting the party is not about papering over differences. As we look forward to 2027, we must begin now to consolidate our structures, strengthen grassroots mobilisation and membership revalidation, and build strategic alliances with progressive minds who share our vision.
“We must remember that elections are not just won in the election year alone. They are won through consistent engagement, credible governance and sustained connection within the electorate,“ he added.
The summit underscored a strategic recalibration by the Labour Party and organised labour, in an attempt to transform the vast network of Nigerian workers into a disciplined electoral structure capable not only of mobilising votes but also of securing, documenting and defending them at the polling unit level.
News channels won't show you this video
