2023 election: We’ll get the working people ultra conscious, stage a show of force mega rally —NLC GS

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is planning an engaging package that will change the narrative in the political space of Nigeria. Comrade Emmanuel Ugboaja, General Secretary of the Congress, in this interview, says a show of force mega rally will soon be held in Abuja. CHRISTIAN APPOLOS presents excepts.

 

Election year is at the corner and PVC is a very strong instrument to decide who governs Nigeria at various levels. How willing and ready is the organised labour to use PVC as an instrument to decide who gets elected come 2023 general elections?

We are starting a push, a political push to get the working family to become ultra conscious. We are not carrying out an enlightenment campaign as usual. No, we are not trying to draw people’s attention or create awareness. We want to create consciousness because consciousness will lead to action. So it is not about awareness. It is about consciousness. The consciousness that will lead to the action that will make people get that PVC, the consciousness that will lead to action that will make people not only get PVC, but insist on voting. Not only insisting on voting, insist on confirming that their vote counted.

So it is not about whether the President signs the Electoral Act or not. If they don’t want decency in the country and think brutality is what is going to be, it will not work. Like we sing during some of our rallies, we ask “how many people can they kill?”

Because they are pushing us to a level that people will know there is nothing left, and it is dangerous for everybody. When you push people to the point that they feel there is nothing left, there is nothing worth living for, there is no hope, there is no answer, you that has put them in that position are not safe either.

If you go down our literature, you will verify when we have warned, right from the structural adjustment times into the era of fuel subsidy removal. We had warned that let us not push Nigeria to a point that the accumulated capitalist wealth will now not be able to be enjoyed within our vicinity and they thought we were blowing hot air, they thought we were saying what was not possible. But within two decades, it is in our faces now.

You now move and people warn you not to drive SUVs to certain parts of the country, don’t put this type of plate number, and don’t use this type of personnel. Right now, the chicken has come home to roost. So now you have accumulated the wealth but you cannot use it. When you accumulate and pack up what you can never put to use, is that not the definition of madness?

Before now, the thinking was that they can go abroad, but COVID brought them down to earth once more and said can you think, can you take a step back and think? Still our people are not thinking. Every day we are begging them to sign and some people are saying don’t sign. This group says sign, the other group says don’t sign.

You are not supposed to be begged to do what is right for the country. We need to do what is right for the country. If not, the country will do what is right for you. Well, reality is now step by step getting to dawn on everybody. They should continue playing games and politics but one day, they will be the ones to suffer for the great injustice and wickedness they are doing to Nigeria and her poor citizens.

You think you will continue to suppress Nigerians, but there will be a limit to it. And that is the danger because when it starts, they will tell you it is organised labour but it is not a matter of  organised labour. Organised labour is part of society and will play its role while other members of the society will play their roles as well both as individuals and as organisations.

Everybody is feeling it, whether you are a professional or not. Because sometimes they want to limit professionalism to those that have degrees but it is not true. A barber is a professional, a vulcaniser is a professional. So for us in NLC, we are mobilising everybody because the country belongs to all of us.

It is not about Labour saying nothing, it is about you also! What are you doing? Everybody should take responsibility. If everybody takes responsibility, the people who are oppressing us will be very few in number. They will be the ones to run.

 

The direction for mobilisation for the next election, expatiate on that?

We have kick-started. Internally we have put together what in the interim we intend to enlarge moving forward. I am talking about what we christened the Nigerian Labour Congress Working People Charter of Demands on governance. The charter contains what we feel should be the way forward, having x-rayed the problems that have besieged us for a while now in the education and health sectors, in management of the economy and security.

You talk of North-East, our people have been killed as teachers, have been killed as nurses, we have lost drivers, we have lost all members of our working families. You go to the South-East, same. Southwest, same. Northwest, same! So we feel it. They say he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches.

We don’t have double passports. We are all Nigerians. We don’t have the capacity to fly abroad for treatment. We are treated by our sisters who are nurses. We are taught by our teachers that have not been paid but feel that their commitment is to the children they see everyday in their neighbourhood and therefore salary or no salary they keep going to teach while those that are oppressing us are busy flying their children abroad where they think they will know better.

So, clearly we have had this put together. Now we are taking up the next step. The next step is to have a larger conversation. And the first step in the larger conversation will be happening on March 2, 2022 at the NAF Centre where we intend to have a one-day conference on the way forward politically for Nigerian working people.

We are tired of people getting into government and then telling us “comrades you know, we did not know it was this bad.” We are tired of people telling us “this cannot be done” when they get into the place. Now, we want answers. We know what the issues are and we want people to address concretely, roadmaps, implementation steps, timelines on how this can be done, so that we can measure the different proposals we have and then pick the one that is best for Nigeria.

After that, we are then going to have a mega rally that we call “people show of force” at the Eagle Square, Abuja. This is for Nigerians to know, for the politicians to know that they have come to the end of the road, that we have had enough of the shenanigans.

So we are going to come out, not paid by anybody, but as a people who want the way forward. So clearly for us, it is about taking our own destiny in our hands so that people will then stop asking us what are you doing to respond to a government policy that is anti-human, anti people. So we want to address it from the roots, from the beginning. And that is the take off we want to do and our hope is that by the time we put six months of intense work on this, 2023 can never be business as usual in Nigeria.

 

Going by the provisions of the Nigeria constitution, a new minimum wage is due but unfortunately some state governments have not paid the N30,000 benchmark minimum wage approved over four years ago, what line of action is to be expected from NLC against such states? 

We can agitate for legislation. We can lobby for legislation but the moment it becomes law, you take it away from the realm of us (organised labour) as interest groups, and it becomes the burden of the government to implement.

That is the challenge we have. People keep misplacing the burden of responsibilities. Our responsibility was to advocate, to push for the level of wage that we felt was necessary and needed for a working family to exist in our country in the circumstances we find ourselves in. When we have struggled and gotten that to become a law, how on earth will it be our responsibility to enforce it?

So the challenge is on the government. Why are you the government if you can no longer guarantee the respect of laws under your watch? If you now can throw your hands up in the air and it then becomes survival of the fittest, then you are no longer government.

So it is about putting the responsibility where it should be. For us, even the minimum wage is no more enough. So it is not a function of why have they not paid? We know that it (N30,000 minimum wage) is completely meaningless now to the working family. So the challenge should be why will a government make a law and then ignore the law?

Does it mean that now there is a law against carrying arms then they expect every Nigerian worker to carry arms and go and enforce collection of his money from the government. If we tell the working families to rise up, use a machete, use a stick, and go to my house and collect your money, then they will roll out the tanks. But for the stability of society everybody has contributed their sovereignty to a body for the purpose of sanity of society. Why are some people thinking that they are bigger than others? Because if we go to the survival of the society, definitely those you find in government houses are as frail and fragile, they might not be the strongest.

So the more we keep pushing people to a brutish situation, where it looks like the survival of the fittest, we are endangering  society.