PUNCH
A meeting between the Federal Government and organised Labour to stave off the planned strike by the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress deadlocked on Monday night.
The Minister of State Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, who hosted the parley in Abuja, could not convince the unions to suspend the strike slated for February 23.
This was as the Association of Master Bakers and Caterers of Nigeria threatened to down tools by February 27, 2024, if the Federal Government failed to implement the agreement it entered into with the association in 2020.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, in an interview with The PUNCH on Tuesday, sought the understanding of the unions, saying, “We are optimistic Labour will see reason and strike will be averted in the interest of the nation.’’
The NLC and TUC on February 8 issued a 14-day nationwide strike notice to the Federal Government over the failure of the Bola Tinubu-led government to implement the agreements reached on October 2, 2023, following the removal of the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit known as petrol.
In a statement signed by the leaders of the two labour unions, Joe Ajaero and Festus Usifo, the organised Labour expressed sadness that despite the passage of time, “The majority of these crucial agreements remain unmet or negligibly addressed, indicating a blatant disregard for the principles of good faith, welfare and rights of Nigerian workers and Nigerians.”
The unions said despite their efforts to ensure industrial peace, the government seemed unperturbed by the mass suffering and hardship across the country.
After the removal of the fuel subsidy by the President on May 29, 2023, the labour unions reached a 16-point agreement with the Federal Government on measures to cushion the pains of the subsidy removal on workers.
N35,000 wage award
Among other things, the government agreed to pay N35,000 to all federal workers beginning from last September pending when a new national minimum wage would be signed into law.
The resolution provided that the wage award would be paid to the federal workers for six months while states were encouraged to extend the same benefit to their workers.
The Federal Government also pledged to make cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians and provide 100 CNG (compressed natural gas) buses nationwide to ease the high transportation costs.
Speaking in an interview with The PUNCH on Tuesday, the NLC Vice President, Hakeem Ambali, insisted that the strike would go on unless the Federal Government addressed “the untold hardship meted on Nigerians by the famous pronunciation that ‘subsidy is gone’ on 29 May.’’
He lamented that the Federal Government had yet to fulfil its part of the agreement with the labour movement.
“The two-week ultimatum stands except the government does the needful and addresses the untold hardship meted on Nigerians by the famous pronunciation that ‘subsidy is gone’ on 29 May.
“We can see pockets of protests across the country. These are very dangerous. So, Labour must rise and offer leadership; Our ultimatum is patriotic,’’ he declared.
Shedding light on what transpired at the meeting with the minister, Ambali, who is also the National President of the National Union of Local Government Employees, in an interview with one of our correspondents, disclosed that the session was called to review the level of implementation of the October agreement.
He stated, “The meeting realised that major parts of the agreement have not been implemented and Labour minister expressed her disappointment that the government had not kept faith with the spirit of the agreements.
“The meeting resolved subsequently that the agreements have not been well implemented and that they (government) still have windows of opportunities to meet to address all these to avert the impending strikes.”
Speaking further, the vice-president noted that the agreement with the Federal Government was time-bound.
He added, “We signed an agreement in October last year that the buses would be ready to ply Nigeria’s road in December last year. We are already in February. I do not think we have seen any bus on the road.
