THE LABOUR QUESTION
Why Philosophy, History, and Political Reality Explain Alex Otti’s Choice to Stay
Politics is not gossip; it is philosophy in motion. And when Governor Alex C. Otti insists on remaining in the Labour Party, despite relentless rumours of defection, he is not merely making a partisan choice—he is aligning with a long and global tradition in political thought: that institutions matter more than convenience.
This moment in Abia politics is not new. History has seen it before—locally and internationally—whenever reform-minded leaders confront pressure to abandon difficult platforms for seemingly easier paths.
THE PHILOSOPHY: POLITICS AS COMMITMENT, NOT ESCAPE
Political philosophers from Edmund Burke to John Rawls have argued that legitimacy flows from consistency between ideals and action. Burke’s famous warning—that politics without principle becomes “the art of the temporary”—is instructive here. Parties, in this view, are not taxis to be hailed when convenient, but vehicles of collective purpose.
Governor Otti’s insistence on staying within Labour Party structures, even amid internal turbulence, reflects a Rawlsian idea of institutional fidelity: reforming systems from within rather than fleeing them at the first sign of friction (A Theory of Justice, Rawls).
THE INTERNATIONAL LESSON: REFORMERS DON’T FLEE THEIR BASE
Globally, reform leaders have often faced similar pressure.
Jeremy Corbyn remained in the UK Labour Party despite sustained internal opposition.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rebuilt Brazil’s Workers’ Party after political crisis rather than defect.
Nelson Mandela resisted fragmentation within the ANC, understanding that movements collapse when leaders prioritise personal survival over institutional endurance (see Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom).
The lesson is consistent across democracies: party instability is not cured by elite exit, but by internal struggle and reform.
THE NIGERIAN CONTEXT: A HISTORY OF DEFECTIONS
Nigeria’s Fourth Republic tells a cautionary tale. Political history shows that serial defections—from AD to PDP, PDP to APC, and now APC to “coalitions”—have weakened ideology and strengthened opportunism.
As political scientist Claude Ake argued in Democracy and Development in Africa, parties in postcolonial states fail when they become mere platforms for power, not vehicles for ideas. Frequent defections have produced electoral victories—but not governance depth.
Against this backdrop, Otti’s refusal to defect reads less like stubbornness and more like counterculture.
LABOUR PARTY AS A HISTORICAL PROJECT
The Labour Party tradition—globally and locally—has always been messy. From the British Labour Party’s early trade-union conflicts (documented in Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes) to Nigeria’s own labour movements, internal contestation has been the norm, not the exception.
To abandon Labour at the moment it is being tested would contradict the very ethos that brought it into relevance in 2023: building an alternative political culture.
POLITICS VS. POLITICAL NOISE
Rumours of defection thrive because Nigerian politics has trained citizens to expect ideological fluidity. Yet, governance outcomes increasingly demand stability of political philosophy. As Francis Fukuyama notes in Political Order and Political Decay, institutions mature only when elites commit to rules even when inconvenient.
Otti’s participation in resolving Labour Party disputes aligns with this logic. Reformers do not outsource stability; they build it.
CONCLUSION: HISTORY IS WATCHING
The Labour Party question is larger than Abia. It is about whether Nigerian politics can finally produce leaders who treat parties as institutions to be strengthened, not ladders to be discarded.
Philosophy teaches patience.
History rewards consistency.
Politics punishes opportunism—eventually.
In choosing to stay, Alex Otti is betting not just on Labour, but on the idea that Nigeria’s democracy can still grow up.
That bet, whether one agrees with him or not, is intellectually coherent, historically grounded, and politically consequential.
AProf Chukwuemeka Ifegwu Eke
