By Dafe Otobo
I SHOULD like to congratulate the Authors – John Odah, Onah Iduh, Salisu Muhammed, Benson Upah and Asuzu Echezona – and the Nigeria Labour Congress for making this book available.
It is a 255-page work, comprising an 8-page Preliminary Section, thirteen chapters, a 4-page References and a 45-page but in three segments of images or photographs capturing persons and events over the years.
Chapter 1 offers a useful description of the development of wage labour, followed by rise of trades unions in colonial public sector, from the Southern Nigeria Civil Service Union in 1912, renamed Nigeria Civil Service Union in 1914 with amalgamation of Northern and Southern Protectorates, the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) in 1931, Railway Workers Union (1931), the Marine Daily Paid Workers’ Union in 1936 and renamed Nigerian Marine African Workers Union 1937, followed by the relative impact of the 1938 Trade Union Ordinance that came into effect on 1 April, 1939. Then followed a summary of the circumstances surrounding the founding of the first central labour organisation, 1949 Iva Valley Massacre and the First Nigeria Labour Congress in 1950, the intensified ideological disagreements over affiliating to the ICFTU and WFTU and ensuing factions in rival central bodies in the 1950s right up to 1967 Civil War, the four labour centres and then the second NLC in 1975 after the Apena Cemetery Declaration.
Chapter 2 covers the well-documented restructuring of trades unions by military regimes from the mid-1970s, the ensuing factions at the centre, Justice Adebiyi Commission and the emergence on 28 February 1978 of NLC in Ibadan. The following are listed as the main achievements of the NLC in its early years: (i) a national secretariat in Lagos; (ii) Declaration of 1st of May, May Day as Public Holiday; (iii) Recruitment of intellectuals into the trade union movement; (iv) Struggle for National Minimum Wage; (v) Winning the right for the NLC to send participants to NIPSS, Jos; (vi) Privatisation of Workers’ Education; (vii) Strengthening of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATTU); (viii) Development of Strategic Alliances with Students’ Union (NANS), Market Women Associations and other Civil Society Organisations; (ix) Struggle against Governments and IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme; (x) NLC’s increasing role in the International Labour Organisation (ILO); (xi) NLC as an active co-founder of the Organisation of Trade Unions of West Africa (OTUWA), its Secretariat eventually relocated from Abidjan to Abuja, with John Odah its current Executive Secretary.
Chapter 3 is devoted to NLC Delegates Conferences since 1981. These are: Kano February 1981 Conference; 1984 Enugu Delegates Conference; 1988 Benin Delegates Conference; 1988 Lagos December Special Delegates Conference;1992 Abuja Delegates Conference;1999 Abuja Delegates Conference; 2002 Abuja Delegates Conference; 2007 Abuja Delegates Conference; 2011 Abuja Delegates Conference; 2015 Abuja Delegates Conference.
For each of these Delegates Conferences, there is a useful and concise breakdown of developments before each of them, major decisions taken, the elected officials of the NLC and of its National Administrative Council (NAC). The Abuja 2015 Delegates Conference, which saw Ayuba Wabba and his team as elected NLC’s officers for the 2015-2019 tenure, appeared to have been the most divisive and turbulent, with a short-lived parallel NLC, headed by Ajaero and Achese, emerging and later changed its name to the United Labour Congress of Nigeria (ULCN).
Chapter 4 contains the essential gist of the NLC’s socio-economic and political struggles for four decades since 1978, and presented basically as…in the four decades of its founding undoubtedly been the most representative nationalist, democratic rallying platform for the Nigerian mass movement by forging coalitions or allies with civil society organisations, students and market men and women in the pursuit of an egalitarian society.
In playing the role of an anchor of the mass movement, the Congress and its leaders naturally engaged in pitch battles and brutal confrontations with Nigeria’s ruling elite – both military dictatorships and their civilian variants – through street protests/demonstrations and rallies, general strikes, enlightenment and advocacy campaigns, all in the determined collective effort to ensure social justice in the country.
Some of the issues receiving detailed attention as pursued from one military dictatorship to the other, including presidency of Shehu Shagari and Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, and said to have resulted in victories are Minimum Wages Struggles, Campaign Against Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), Campaign Against Neoliberalism manifested as Anti-Privatisation, Anti-Regulation Struggles and Fuel Price increases. It is quite an informative chapter.
Chapter 5, as the title announces, tells the story of popular resistance against increase in petrol prices from the days of President Goodluck Jonathan in August 2011, with the NLC joining forces with the Trade Union Congress and issuing a condemnatory joint communiqué. In Abuja, even some politicians belonging to the rival political parties showed up in protest marches, condemning the price increase. Mass protests and strike actions were ended when the government reduced cost per litre of petrol to N85 instead of N141 it announced from the prevailing N65.
Chapter 6 traces the beginnings of labour and politics in Nigeria, Imoudu becoming Vice President of the NCNC in mid-1940s, to aborted attempts by labour unions to form political parties in the 1950s, the Civil War cum military regimes truncated efforts at operating the New Nigerian Labour Party, the Socialist Workers and Farmers Party (SWAFP), NLC’s leadership activities during Babangida’s famous transition programme which ended in two political parties of a little bit to the Right and a little bit to the Left of NRC and SDP respectively. By 2003, with Comrade Adams Oshiomhole as NLC president, Comrade SOZ Ejiofoh and A.A. Salam as acting National Chairman and National Secretary respectively of the Party for Social Democracy (PSD), floated by NLC Political Commission, was successfully registered by INEC. A year later, 2004, its name was changed to Labour Party. Governor Mimiko had two consecutive terms in Ondo State as Labour Party’s candidate, just as the party struck an alliance with the Action Congress of Nigeria (CAN) to enable Comrade Oshiomhole win Edo State governorship elections. The rest of the Chapter details the crisis within the Labour Party and the moves towards repositioning it.
Chapter 7 is about the links between the NLC, the students’ movement and other civil society organisations in the country, beginning with the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS) not only banned by military regime for opposing increases in feeding and accommodation fees in the universities, many students were also killed during protests. Students’ bodies then formed National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) much against official opposition which thereafter developed close links with the NLC since 1982, closer still by 1986 after killing by police of four students at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Over the years, some of the students’ activists offered administrative positions in the NLC are Yahaya Hashim, Salisu Muhammed, Chom Bagu, Issa Aremu, Chris Uyot, John Odah, Salisu Lukman, and Olaitan Oyerinde.
As for Civil Society Organisations and other professional bodies, the NLC reached out to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) and from the NLC-Civil Society Pro-Democracy Summit in 2001, apparently saw the revival of the Labour Party and emergence of the Labour-Civil Society Coalition (LASCO), a “loose coalition” with the NLC President and Dipo Fashina serving as co-Chairs, while NLC General Secretary and Chima Ubani as co-Secretaries – Abiodun Aremu succeeding Ubani upon his death. The various joint activities and rallies embarked upon by both organisations are comprehensively discussed.
The Chapter ends with pointed observation on intricacies of alliances of this sort:
The lessons of engagement with Civil Society Organisations over the years are those that indicate that for a lasting partnership, trust needs to be continually built on both sides. Once trust breaks down, as with many things, years of painstaking effort to build bridges are burnt and the process has to start all over again. This needs to be strenuously avoided. For lasting relationship, allies in the labour movement should not take one another for granted.
Chapter 8 explores the NLC and its conception, philosophy and practice of International Solidarity. Solidarity, for it is “strengthening the joint capacity of workers and their unions across industrial and geographical boundaries to engage employers and government with the objective of eliminating/minimizing exploitation and repression.” From 1949 when the WFTU split from the ICFTU, ideological cleavages and divisions, part consequences of Cold War politics of Western Countries vis-à-vis emerging Communist bloc countries, featured in labour movements worldwide. Indeed, in Nigeria the Sunmonu and Chiroma-led NLC leaderships were prevented by law or decree from affiliating with international trade union bodies except OATUU and OTUWA.
From the year 2000, however, the NLC was able to reinforce its links with the ICFTU and at the Durban World Congress in South Africa relationship was strengthened with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the Dutch FNV, and COSATU. The Ghana TUC, COSATU and NLC subsequently forming a “trilateral alliance of like-minded comrades”. (p.137) In 2006 the World Council of Labour (WCL) and the ICFTU merged to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and in 2007 its ITUC-Africa regional branch or body holding its inaugural conference in Accra, Ghana.
In all, the rest of Chapter 8 chronicles NLC’s bilateral, trilateral and multilateral collaboration with other national labour centres, regional and international labour organisations, such as LO-Norway, TUC-UK, Canadian CLC, FNV of Netherlands, LO Sweden, Commonwealth Trade Union Council (CTUC), and the ILO. Prominent matters of such collaboration were on (i) training; (ii) criminalisation of protests over socioeconomic issues; (iii) right of workers and workers organisations to picket; (iv) right of workers in essential services to organise and go on strike; (v) right of paramilitary workers to organise and go on strike; (vi) struggle against Apartheid in South Africa; (vii) liberation of Western Sahara; (viii) support for struggle of the Palestinian people for an independent state; (ix) condemnation of trade unionists and student arbitrarily detained by repressive governments.
CHAPTER 9 contains a comprehensive account of the evolution, structure and management of the NLC’s educational and training activities – local, regional and international – Commonwealth Trade Union Council (CTUC) assisting in imparting its Active Learning method, as well as funding/sponsorship by previously identified organisations, EU and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES). The NLC’s past educational programmes, were (i) Monthly Lecture Series; (ii) Educators Forum; (iii) Rain and Harmattan Schools; (iv) State Level Leadership Programme; (v) Study Circle; (vi) 4 months Certificate course on Labour Law and Labour Relations.
The NLC is still unable to establish its own Labour College so far, what the competing central labour organisations of old did with the assistance of regional and international labour centres. Currently, representatives of organised labour are appointed to the governing body of the Michael Imoudu National Institute of Labour Studies (MINILs). The lessons and challenges identified in course of these educational activities and programmes are: (i) The growth of politically conscious leaders of the trade union movement helped in shaping the educational programme and giving them a direction; (ii) Second, the conscious recruitment of politically conscious cadres from the working class as well as from the radical students’ movements also made the educational programmes qualitatively strong and ideologically clear; (iii) Third, trade union investments in political education has helped in reproducing class conscious cadres in the affiliates who have on a daily basis conducted the ‘battles’ to protect their members and the general public; (iv) Fourth, the support from allies within and outside the country in supporting the educational programmes. The support from universities and other educational centres were instrumental in the success of the educational programmes.
Lessons
1) Absence of a Labour College infrastructure for trade union education to be institutionalized.
2) Educational development programmes have over the years been anchored on a complementary development of the industrial unions’ educational development…but many unions are yet to establish full-fledged education departments that are appropriately staffed and trained.
3) Financial sustainability of our educational programmes.;
4) Recruitment process of cadres from the Universities and other institutions have been made impossible because of the happenings within these institutions…” we need to develop a strategy to produce our own class-conscious cadres. Developing a curriculum to actualize above rests squarely within our education and training mandate.” (pp.168-169)
CHAPTER 10 concentrates on Women and Trade Unionism, and the NLC’s policies on Gender Equity, the central body deciding in 1982 to establish Women’s wings in its State Councils, followed in 2003 by the creation of the National Women Commission and some women activists identified, trained nationally and internationally as Women Trade Union Educators. Some 28 of them were mentioned. (p.187).
The National Women Commission’s February 2003 Women Conference was attended by delegates from all 36 states of the Federation and international participants drawn from Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), Sierra Leone Labour Congress (SLLC) and Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU). Fraternal partner organizations operating in Nigeria that participated in the conference included Oxfam GB Nigeria; American Centre for International Labour Solidarity and Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FEF), Top Government Officers from the State Governments to Federal Ministries of Labour and Women Affairs.
This is followed by summary of progress on Gender Initiatives by the NLC manifesting in various workshops held from 2005 by various member-unions, the Ibadan-held Mid-Term National Gender Evaluation Conference attracting numerous local, regional and international participants, including African Trade Union Unity (OATUU), Ghana Trades Union Congress, NALEDI of South Africa, ICFTU-AFRO, Trade Union Congress (UK), Sierra Leone Labour Congress and Congress of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), Oxfam GB Nigeria, ActionAid International, Nigeria and Solidarity Centre.
Some of the unions which continued to carry out specific programmes in tune with the NLC Gender Equity Policy are: (1) Medical & Health Workers Union (MHWUN); (2) National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANNM); (3) National Union Local Government Employees (NULGE), (4) Radio, Television & Theatre Workers RATTAWU; (5) National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber, Leather and Non-Metallic Employees (NUCFLAMNPE); (6) National Union of Civil Engineering, Construction, Furniture and Wood Workers (NUCECFWW); (7) Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU); (8) National Union of Electricity Employment (NUEE); (9) National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG); (10) Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and (11) Nigeria Civil Service Union (NSCU).
Others are (12) National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, (NUTGTWU); (13) Amalgamated Union of Public Corporation, Civil Service (14) Technical and Recreational Services Employees (AUPCTRE); (15) Nigeria Union of Agriculture and Allied Employees (NUAAE); (16) Maritime Workers Union (MWUN); and (17) National Union of Hotels and Personal Services Workers (NUHPSW).
Identified challenges in the path of women participation in unionism at all levels are (1) beliefs and practices based on patriarchy; (2) participation of women in the labour market is quite low compared to their male counterpart; (3) the percentage of women engaged in the formal wage sector is low compared with women who are in the informal sector, which is usually not unionized and highly unprotected; (4) structural and attitudinal discrimination against women by dominant male trade unionists; (5) even unions where women have advantage of being in the majority like in the teachers’ union and their nurses and mid-wives’ counterpart, such unions are yet to fully embrace the principle of proportional representation as such women are still under-represented in their leadership structures.
CHAPTER 11 covers the 2015 NLC ELEVENTH DELEGATES CONFERENCE and emergence of Comrade Ayuba Wabba as President. As is usual during such elections, individual trade unionists and member-unions show their preferences and create campaign teams to present whichever candidates preferred for various elective positions in manifestos, flyers, leaflets and campaign events and processions. Those behind Comrade Ayuba Wabba called themselves Redemption 2015 Group, and essential aims in their manifesto duly outlined. (p.210). Their 14 broad issues included: (1) Tour of industrial unions and state councils of Congress; (2) Leadership Retreat at national and state levels; (3) Constitution of local government chapter of NLC; (4) Funding and appointment of fulltime state secretaries for all 37 state councils of Congress; (5) Education and training/permanent structure for union education (Labour College); (6) Organizing the unorganized; (7) Voluntary mergers and restructuring of industrial unions; (8) Research and documentation; (9) Union investment; (10) Contributory pension and the plight of pensioners; (11) Labour-civil society alliance; (12) Congress and labour party; (13) Job creation/employment initiatives; (14) Campaign for good governance/against corruption. Well, he won. Congratulations!
CHAPTER 12, titled, REFLECTIONS ON THE NLC: INTERVIEW WITH Congress President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, mni, makes very interesting reading and I recommend that everyone reads it. Because of this, I will refrain from discussing its content other than to say the questions were designed to draw out Comrade President’s evaluation of his team’s performance and achievements so far, main challenges and measures to counteract anti-labour and anti-workers policies, and, as Nigerians are fond of saying, “the way forward”.
CHAPTER 13, Looking into the Future after 40 years, itemises “the way forward” also issues include: (1) the Labour Movement in the Era of Neo-Liberalism; (2) from Principles to Decisive Action; (3) Principles Gather Meaning Through Action; (4) Organising for Change (5) Trade Union Education for Empowerment (6) The Resource Crisis
Observations/Suggestions
Finally, do permit me to make 3 observations or suggestions.
The first, as this book is a smaller version of the real one to be published later, I would like to suggest that the title be changed to CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE NIGERIAN LABOUR CONGRESS 1978-2018. Working class struggles are too complex and occurring in all industries simultaneously, many of such events and actions not captured in this book for it to be so titled.
The second relates to GENDER TERMINOLOGIES in the Labour Movement. Best to use FEMALE to replace WOMEN. There are many GIRLS in the labour movement and at workplaces!
The third, is about GENDER DISCRIMINATION in THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT. In relation to administrative and political positions in the unions and NLC, for example, how about creating MEN’S WINGS too, with the WOMEN’s and MEN’s WINGS sharing the positions in proportion to their numbers? Just imagine Public and Private Sector Employers engaging, deploying, communicating and compensating their workers along gender lines!
Professor Otobo is of the University of Lagos.
