- Governors Meet to Avert Strike
AS organised labour intensifies mobilisation for a national strike and mass
peaceful protest scheduled to commence on Monday, September 28, 2020, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) are returning to the negotiation table with the federal government in a meeting scheduled to hold today, Thursday, September 24, 2020. The leadership of the two centres will meet with government representatives to be led by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige around 3pm at the Banquet Hall, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Baring a consensus between the parties or last minute change of mind by the labour leaders or concession by the federal government, the NLC and TUC have agreed to jointly hold the industrial strike and peaceful protest on Monday next week after working behind the scene to harmonise strategies for the resistance to the recent increment in the price of petrol and hike in electricity tariff as well as VAT.
The NLC, in a communiqué issued at the end of an emergency meeting of its National Executive Council (NEC) held on Tuesday, September 2020, while endorsing the resolutions of its Central Working Committee (CWC) of last week, strongly underpinned its resolutions on economic motives and advanced more reasons beyond the increment in petrol price and electricity tariff.
The communiqué, signed by Comrades Ayuba Wabba and Emmanuel Ugboaja, NLC’s President and General Secretary respectively, stated that apart from hikes in petrol price and electricity tariff, the NEC was guided to endorse the strike action and peaceful protest after it was apprised on the increase in Value Added Tax (VAT) from 5% to 7.5% as well as “incessant increases on charges by banks on depositors’ funds and on financial transactions through Nigerian banks.”
According to the communiqué, the NEC meeting noted that the increases in the pump price of petrol and electricity tariff were ill-timed and insensitive in the context of the hardship that Nigerians are passing through in the wake of the socio-economic dislocations occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The NEC also noted that the increase in energy cost has escalated the cost of doing business in Nigeria and leading to the death of many business concerns just as it has resulted in hyper-inflation that has totally rendered useless the new N30,000 national minimum wage.
While stating that the real challenge in the petroleum industry lies in the inability or failure of successive governments to resuscitate public refineries and build new ones, the NEC observed that the argument for deregulation has remained a recurring decimal for more than three decades but has translated only to perpetual increase in the price of petroleum products that continue to engender poverty of the masses.
On electricity tariff, the communiqué states: “On the increase in electricity tariff, the National Executive Council noted that government earned about N400 billion from the privatization of the electricity power sector but has so far spent more than N1.5 trillion on the power sector after the privatization. This clearly shows that the power sector privatization program has failed. The NEC also noted that the investments in the power sector has not translated into improvement in services and increased efficiency in the power sector. The NEC reasoned that government cannot, therefore, transfer the cost of its own failure in the power sector privatization exercise on innocent Nigerians;
“The National Executive Council also described as worrisome the fact that those mainly targeted by the latest increase in electricity tariff are manufacturers, many of whom would be forced to shut down resulting in mass redundancy thus worsening the unemployment and crime situation in Nigeria.
“The NEC concluded that manufacturers that manage to survive the double jeopardy of high operating costs for their independent power generators and high electricity charges would simply transfer their new costs on already impoverished Nigerians. Ultimately, the dislocations consequent on the increase in the cost of living have eroded the gains of the recent increase in the national minimum wage.”
Governors Forum Meet
Meanwhile the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF) will today (Thursday, 24, 20200 hold an emergency virtual meeting with a sole agenda of averting the planned strike.
Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo, the Head of Media and Public Affairs of the NGF in an interview with Radio Nigeria, monitored by National Record in Abuja Thursday morning, that NGF’s emergency virtual teleconference will start at 6pm on Thursday.
According to Bello-Barkindo, the NGF convened the emergency meeting to intervene in the crisis between organised labour and the federal government in a bid to avert the looming strike which the governors believe will negatively affect the economy that is battling with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bello-Barkindo said the governors will be considering options that will be mutually acceptable to workers and the government in what he described as soft landing on amicable grounds.
NLC NEC’s Communique of 22nd September 2020
