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In a blistering verdict that eviscerated the lingering leadership crisis plaguing the Labour Party, the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal on Thursday emphatically declared Senator Nenadi Usman as the sole, legitimate leader of the party, delivering a humiliating judicial knockout to embattled former chairman Barrister Julius Abure.

A unanimous three-member panel didn’t just dismiss Abure’s appeal; they torched it. Describing his legal challenge as utterly devoid of merit, the appellate court upheld an earlier Federal High Court ruling that had already cast Abure aside and handed the reins to Usman. The judgment leaves Abure with no remaining footprint of authority.

The latest legal lynching of Abure’s ambition stems from his ill-fated challenge to a January 2026 Federal High Court decision, a ruling that merely reaffirmed what the Supreme Court had already made painfully clear: the Labour Party convention that fraudulently returned Abure as National Chairman was dead on arrival, null and void.

Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Oyejoju Oyewumi delivered a scalding rebuke, holding that Abure was trying to resurrect a corpse. The Supreme Court, Justice Oyewumi noted, had already closed the book on this farce. There was, and is, no legal basis to reopen a matter long laid to rest.

In a move that further cemented Usman’s authority, the appellate court fully endorsed the directive compelling the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to recognize her as the party’s leader. The court ruled that the Federal High Court had acted well within its constitutional powers when it forced the electoral umpire to stop playing politics and actually perform its statutory duties.

But the panel saved its most searing criticism for Abure’s conduct. The judges accused him of a blatant abuse of court process, a euphemism for judicial terrorism. They specifically called out his shameless forum shopping: dragging the same dead issue before another court as if the Supreme Court had never spoken. The judges said Abure’s continued claim to the chairmanship was not just misguided but an act of defiance against a settled legal position. In plain English: he knew he had no claim but kept lying anyway.

Calling Abure’s appeal a parasitic waste of judicial time, the court dismissed it with prejudice and slammed him with a N10 million cost, a financial punishment for his audacity.

Reacting to the evisceration of her rival, Senator Usman framed the judgment as a victory not for herself, but for democracy and the rule of law. She praised a judiciary that, for once, refused to bend to pressure. Usman thanked long-suffering party members for their patience during the months of Abure-induced chaos and urged all stakeholders to finally focus on rebuilding a party that has been held hostage by one man’s delusion.

The Labour Party’s caretaker leadership, now firmly under Usman, called on Nigerians to keep faith as it limbers up for the 2027 general elections, wasting no time in signaling that the era of Abure’s disruptive fantasy is finally over.