Labour explains why strike was suspended

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has advanced reasons for the suspension of the nationwide planned strike and protest against fuel and electricity increase. According to the labour centre, major among the reasons was to eradicate the culture of self-centredness by Nigerian politicians and their attitude towards the poor population.

President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba, in his Independence Day speech, said organised labour, since the British colonial rule, has played the role of a vanguard pan-Nigerian institution standing as a check to neo-liberal and anti-people policies of successive governments.

“Labour would continue to be the voice of the voiceless, the voice of caution, the voice of unity and the voice that galvanizes ‘togetherness’ towards realising the huge potential in the destiny of Nigeria and her immensely talented people,” he said.

He lamented the dire straits of the country in spite of human and natural resources available for development but for poor leadership over the years: “It is unimaginable that, with the abundance of water sources, vast windy terrains, coal and large deposits of natural gas, Nigeria struggles to generate and distribute up to 5,000 megawatts of electricity, a sum insufficient to power some airports abroad. 

“It is sad that, at 60 years, our political leaders still prefer to send their children to schools abroad and treat themselves in foreign hospitals since our public schools and hospitals have been so terribly mismanaged. 

“Truly, the message Nigerians, especially workers, get when our political leaders say that we are together is that we are together to the extent of baking the national cake. When it comes to eating from the cake, Nigerian workers and people are shut out in the cold and rain while those who had forced their way to positions of political leadership corner the collective wealth for themselves and their families alone.” 

The NLC president said it was in light of those reflections on Nigeria’s journey in nationhood that labour adopted some of the positions it took in the recent engagement and negotiation with government over the increase in the price of premium motor spirit, otherwise known as ‘fuel’ or ‘petrol,’ and the astronomical hike in electricity tariff. 

“We told government that the so-called deregulation cannot just be about incessant increases in the price of refined petroleum products but should be more about the efficient management of our God-given resources, especially our oil refineries for the benefit of the Nigerian people, especially workers and the poor,” he said. 

According to him, it was on this basis that government, for the first time since labour’s age long struggle against incessant increase in the pump price of petrol, yielded to the demand by labour to set timelines for the complete overhaul of Nigeria’s refineries and include unions in the oil and gas sector in this process to observe progress being made.

On the issue of hike in electricity tariff, Wabba noted that labour reminded government of the provisions of Chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution that stipulated that the economy must be managed by government in the interest of the people: “We pointed out to government the folly of making a profit of about N400bn from the sale of our electricity assets to private investors and then going ahead to spend N1.5tr on assets that had already been sold. This clearly justified our conclusion that the privatisation of the power sector was a failure and the recent hike was an attempt by government to pass off its own failure in the power sector privatisation to poor Nigerians.”