“There are good leaders who actively guide and bad leaders who actively misguide.” —Shiv Khera
By Daniel Kanu
President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Joe Ajaero, on Wednesday, November 1, narrowly missed appointment with death.
By divine grace, he is said to have survived an alleged mischievous plot to hunt him down. He ended up battered, assaulted, brutalized, and detained by heavily armed police operatives with his right eye completely shot.
Ajaero was in Owerri, the Imo State capital, for a planned NLC protest.
He was there to mobilise Imo workers for a mega protest rally in the state over an alleged violation and abuse of rights and privileges of workers by the Governor Hope Uzodimma-led government.
The union had accused the Imo government of owing workers and pensioners over 42 months’ salary and pension arrears. The union also frowned at the declaration of thousands of Imo workers and pensioners as ghost workers by the state government, accusing it too of not properly implementing the national minimum wage, trying to use the courts to stifle lawful protests, attempting to break the ranks of the union in the state, continually interfering in the affairs of the state council, hiring thugs to vandalise the congress’ state secretariat, as well as breaching an agreement the government voluntarily entered into with the union as far back as 2021.
It was against this background that labour charged the state with a major industrial action which they noted was inevitable.
Going by reports, the released NLC president has been referred for serious medical investigation, including a head brain scan, full body scan and cervical spine therapy, among others, to ascertain the complications he may have suffered after his battering.
As the news filtered out that the NLC president had ran into trouble in Imo, both Labour and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) unequivocally vowed to throw the state into chaos if Ajaero was not released on the same day from the police custody.
Amid backlash from Nigerians after his arrest and pressure by all relevant stakeholders that threatened to shut down Imo, the police came out to deny reports of abduction of Ajaero, claiming that they only whisked away the labour leader to guarantee his safety from being lynched after some miscreants hijacked the NLC rally.
It must be emphasized that protest is a fundamental right under Section 40 of the Nigerian constitution and part of that right obliges the Nigeria police to protect people when they are protesting.
The police were accused of being partial, the reason organized labour is accusing them of colluding with the Imo State government to allow thugs to harass, and dehumanize Ajaero, as not even one alleged miscreant was arrested.
Under the International Labour Organisation (ILO) obligation it is a very serious violation of the right of labour not to observe peaceful protest.
But the Imo State government quickly said that Ajaero attracted whatever that happened to him because there was a standing National Industrial Court (NIC) injunction that the NLC should not go on with the planned strike.
Labour had earlier warned that it would not recognize any Industrial Court injunction stopping them not to express their grievances.
But assuming and not conceding that labour disobeyed a court order, is the solution the kind of maltreatment, the blindfolding that Ajaero was subjected to?
Some security analysts who spoke with Sunday Sun, said that the explanation offered by the police was full of loopholes.
For instance, prominent lawyer and human rights activist, Femi Falana, advised the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kayode Egbetokun, to ensure that the police officers who allegedly brutalized him be made to face the full wrath of the law.
Falana faulted the response of the police to Ajaero’s arrest, citing wide loophole in their submission.
“Why did the police allow Comrade Ajaero to be brutalized by the so –called miscreants? In other words, why did the police not protect him from the violent attack?
“So, the police who witnessed the attack without making any arrest suddenly turned around to take the victim to the police clinic. The members of the public who decried the barbaric attack took pictures, which exposed the misleading version of the police,” Falana said.
The question on the lips of most citizens is, at what point did peaceful protest become a crime? All that the workers did was to converge to have a peaceful protest to be addressed by Ajaero which experts said is not a crime.
The protest, an eye-witness that spoke to Sunday Sun disclosed that “some people came, hired thugs, with arms and all kinds of dangerous weapons to attack the unarmed peaceful protesters with the aim of disorganizing and infiltrating the ranks of the demonstrators”.
Commentators are of the view that even if the state government has no hand in what happened, but the fact that it happened under their watch is an indictment on them, the government and the police.
If such a thing can happen under the watch of a state government and they are saying they have no hand in it, then we have a problem. What was the responsibility of government when the mess was being propagated? Are we saying that armed thugs can come into the state and have a field day and none was apprehended for punishment, they wondered.
However, the residual point will be that those grievances raised by labour and on the basis of which the protest was to take place must be properly addressed, and Governor Uzodimma needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that what happened in Owerri, under his watch, that he truly has no hand in it because it is his name and his administration that are being mentioned.
What happened in Imo is mind-boggling and unacceptable. The use of violence against innocent citizens especially against trade union leaders by the state has unfortunately become the norm. This will cause our nation dearly if people are allowed to get away with such violence and bloodletting.
Joe Ajaero was born on December 17, 1964 in Emekuku , Owerri North, Imo State. He got his first degree at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a masters degree in Industrial and Labour Relations from the University of Lagos.