On Wednesday, August 6, 2025, dozens of civil society organizations (CSOs) supportive of the Julius Abure-led faction of the Labour Party (LP) staged a peaceful protest at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) headquarters in Abuja, demanding the inclusion of LP candidates in the August 16, 2025, bye-elections across 12 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Council elections. Protesters, arriving by 11:00 AM WAT, carried placards with messages like “INEC, who is using you against LP,” “Mahmood stop destroying democracy in Nigeria,” and “Tell INEC to obey court orders,” as reported by Vanguard and Tribune Online. The demonstration follows INEC’s exclusion of Abure’s candidates, citing a Supreme Court ruling on April 4, 2025, which confirmed Abure’s tenure as National Chairman ended on June 8, 2023, and invalidated his faction’s primaries for lack of INEC monitoring, per NigerianEye.
The Abure-led LP, through National Publicity Secretary Obiora Ifoh, condemned INEC’s decision as “unlawful” and an “abuse of power,” arguing that the Electoral Act 2022 and the 1999 Constitution grant the party rights to field candidates, and that the Supreme Court did not rule on LP’s internal leadership but on jurisdictional limits of lower courts. Conversely, the Senator Nenadi Usman-led faction, via spokesman Ken Asogwa, disowned the protest, labeling organizers as “political impersonators” and urging security agencies to arrest them, while praising INEC’s exclusion as aligning with the Supreme Court’s ruling. X posts from @ARISEtv on August 4, 2025, noted the Usman faction’s support for INEC’s decision, while @SaharaReporters on August 6 highlighted public frustration over INEC’s perceived bias, reflecting LP’s deepening internal crisis. The protest underscores fears of diminishing LP influence ahead of 2027, with Abure’s faction vowing legal action if INEC does not reverse the exclusion.
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