Leaders of organized labour and civil society organizations allies on Monday admonished Nigerian workers across the country to take advantage of the forthcoming 2019 general election to vote out politicians who are fond of impoverishing the citizenry through unfriendly policies and programmes.
The workers who converged at the symposium with the theme: ‘Making Nigeria work for the people,’ organized by Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), also harped on the need for the President Muhammadu Buhari and all the Security Chiefs at the State level to fix critical sectors of the economy, implement new minimum wage for workers and ensure timely payment of pension benefits to retirees.
Some of the placards displayed during the Road Show are: ‘Minimum wage, minimum pension’; ‘Stop precarious life, banish kidnappings and armed robberies’; ‘Decent n be for youths at 50’; ‘Electrification + industrial is action = development’; ‘Kill corruption now’; ‘Workers right are human rights’; ‘Declare state of emergency on our roads; labour not to be underrated’; ‘Non payment of salaries at independence is corruption’; ‘Make Nigeria’s work’: Give us minimum wage, no to wage freeze; ‘Nigeria @ 57 Leaders not dealers’; ‘NLC says Yes to redistribution of income, no to inequality’; among others.
Wabba and other stakeholders who frowned at various self-inflicted challenges bedeviling Nigeria 57 years of independence, harped on the need for good governance, employment generation, accountability and judicious utilization of resources for the benefits of Nigerian workers who create wealth.
While stressing the need for Local Government autonomy, the NLC helmsman urged Federal Government to immediately send relief materials for Nigerian workers who he described as not only being devalued but degraded.
“In almost six decades of national independence, we are not where we ought to be, in virtually all facets of development indexes, looking at our available human and natural resources. This much has been captured copiously in various analysis during the current and previous anniversaries.
“However, we should not dismiss ourselves as a failed nation. This is because while there are a number of countries that are our peers in nationhood that have made tremendous progress, there are also a number of other countries that got independence around the same time as we did, that have not progressed as much as we have. Some of these countries have even literally ceased to exist as nation states.
“Additionally, we must bear in mind that due to the potentials we possess as a big nation, as the giant of the black race, many do not want us to actualise our full potentials. There are many out there that do not wish that we succeed and prosper as a nation.
“As Nigerians, we must continue to have confidence in ourselves as citizens, build bridges of peace and unity instead of indulging in hatred and constant promotion of separatist agitation. We must believe in our ability to overcome our national challenges and turn our diversity into an advantage to promote the wellbeing and welfare of all the people that populate this huge country.
According to him, “as long as our political and bureaucratic elite continue to misappropriate and divert resources made available for development, we cannot hope to overcome our current developmental challenges. This much Mr President’s figures on bailouts and refunds on Paris debts refunds and the persistent diversion by some state governors.”
While speaking on the need for economic empowerment of nigerian people, Wabba harped on the need to address the issue of “poverty, inequality and economic imbalances between the super-rich tiny minority and the rest of the population is one of the key challenges of our nationhood today.
“Our middle class has more or less been wiped out. What we now have are a very tiny few who are at the top, and very rich, and the vast majority of the people at the bottom ladder who are poor.
“It is in the above context that government must refocus it’s development programmes and planning to address the pressing needs of the vast majority of Nigerians that are excluded if the upheavals we are having in different parts of the country is not going to develop into a convulsion. Government must address the critical area of full, productive and decent employment.
“On the occasion of our 57th independence anniversary, we must again ask the federal government to reconstitute the national minimum wage negotiating council to enable us negotiate a new national minimum wage for this country urgently. The 2011 collective agreement entered into with the government at the end of the last negotiations, provided for a 5year cycle, for reopening negotiations, which is overdue.
“Secondly, all economic indexes such as inflationary rate, cost of living index, exchange rate, high cost of goods and services etc, have all shown that the current minimum wage of N18,000 is obsolete. There is an urgent need for the government to give the go ahead for these negotiations to start as workers are running out of patience.”
He further alleged that “despite our independence, because of the compromises and betrayal of our ruling elites, we are now grasping with neo- liberalism and the control of our decision and policy making processes, which are now dictated by multinational organisations of the IMF and World Bank and their sister hegemonic organisation, the WTO.
“Under the above dispensation, the Nigerian state which had at the beginning sought to be a developmental state, with control of the commanding heights of the economy, has now surrendered this important position to a so called private sector, which is now seen as the main engine for national development. None of the countries that have witnessed true and genuine development have followed this illusionary path. Therefore for Nigeria to truly develop and industrialise, all Nigeria patriots must join us in the struggle to bring back the Nigerian state to being an arrow head and engine of development.
“This must mean that we must discard the dictates of the international financial institutions and invest massively in education, health care and other social services; invest in upgrading our infrastructure in such critical area as energy etc,” Wabba stated.
Also speaking at Unity Fountain, Yemisi Bamgbose, NLC Auditor who alleged that “our leaders are behaving like prodigal sons,” argued that they have amass wealth for their immediate families at the detriment of the citizenry.
On her part, Comfort Oko called for policy that will compel all political holders to send their children to public schools in Nigeria, just as she condemned huge forex being spent to finance overseas of their children.
“We cannot be earning same wage with prisoners, hence demanded for living minimum wage and provision of infrastructure that will enable bread winners to get jobs and send Nigerian children to school,” Oko urged.
Also speaking, Peter Ozo-Eson, NLC General Secretary urged Nigerian workers to collect their voters cards and ensure that all the self serving political office holders are vote out of office in the 2019 general election.
The NLC Scribe who frowned at the disconnect between the government and the governed and the communities, admonished Nigerians to wrestle power from political office holders were hand picked.
In his address, Issa Aremu, General Secretary of Garment Workers Union who frowned at the resurgence of colonialism in country, emphasized the need for government at all levels to guarantee security of lives and property as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, noting that lives have been devalued going by the spate of kidnappings for ransom of “N5,000 N2,000 even for recharge cards.”
KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja
