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By Bimbola Oyesola 08033246177, [email protected]
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has attributed the declining economic situation in Nigeria to bad leadership.
Speaking at the two-day workshop organised by the congress in Lagos, with the theme “Workers’ struggle for economic justice in a declining economy: The Nigerian perspective”, the president of the congress, Festus Osifo, said everything starts and ends with leadership.
The president, who was represented by his deputy, Oyibo Jimoh, noted that when a country has a good and focused leader who has foresight, he will guide his people to the right path.
“A leader must have a vision and any country that does not have such a leader is doomed. It is pathetic that the President of Nigeria does not have economic plans, people decide and pass it over to him, right or wrong, it is taken, but if he was well informed, there are decisions he would not want to implement, but because he lacks that basic knowledge anything thrown at him is accepted” he lamented.
He said that it is pathetic that the Organised labour has lost its voice as it can been hardly seen unless there is a hike in pump price.
He said that Labour suddenly came alive to protest the prolonged strike of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and after the strike, everyone of them went back to sleep
“It should not end there, after the protest there should be a semantic way of handling the issues. With a serious Labour body, what is happening in the university sector can’t happen,” he stated.
Jimoh stressed that the way forward for the country to come out of the declining economy is for Organised Labour to break their silence and begin to challenge the anti-people policies.
He advised the Nigerian workers to be informed and in the forth coming election, they should not vote on party line but screened candidates and vote for the right person.
The Chairman, TUC, Lagos State Council, Gbenga Ekundayo, also speaking during the workshop
said the purpose for choosing the theme was tailored down to the current situation of the country, how it is biting workers and how they can strive for economic justice for themselves.
Ekundayo explained that Nigerian workers need economic justice, to get the kind of remuneration that can take care of them and have an economic polity that makes meaning.
He explained that in 2019, when workers agitated for minimum wage, both the private and public sectors looked for ways to improve the remuneration of workers.
He however lamented that the event of COVID-19 in 2020 had eroded the value and recent inflation and devaluation of currency has further worsen the workers’ plight.
He emphasised that it is very important at this time in the life of the country to find the economic justice that can speak to the needs and concerns of workers and ensure they have a minimum bite of their daily sweat, as this cropped up as the theme of the workshop.
“The very declining challenge of the economy is how much the country has neglected production for decades”
“The devaluation of the naira is as a result of the country importing more than exporting and the country can’t export what it did not produce” he lamented.
The Lagos Council Chairman reiterated that it is disheartening that the country production in more cases are not up to international standard, as there is need to improve on the quality of manpower that are available and also have the mindset that seek and strive to produce a product that can meet international standard.
According to him, when this is done there will be job for the people and also the revenue generated as a nation will improve drastically.
He opined that there is need for adequate power supply that would make the factories work, at the same time be productive and also be profitable.
He said, “There is need for the provision of good road network whereby those who need to truck their items would not have to spend too much fund on maintenance and also spend needless hours in traffic due to bad roads.
“We must provide effective rail transportation that would enable movement to and fro easier for trade to move through, as this are things that we need to work on.”
Ekundayo said Labour is open to collaboration and also ready to corporate with the government and all relevant authorities to see how they can get these things done not just because they want to create wealth for themselves, but they have a duty of care to their children and the generation that is coming.
“The expectation at the end of this workshop is that our minds will be open and we will also come up with a communique that we will push as a demand to the relevant authorities in order to move the country forward” he said
