You are very involved in the process that led to the on-going crisis in the Labour movement, the last NLC delegates’ conference and election. Recently, two of the NLC affiliates were trying to lead few other trade unions to finally leave the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to register a new labour centre. What is your view on this development?
As you know I was very active in terms of monitoring the outcome of that election. In the first place it was very tragic that the initial election at the international conference Centre was disrupted and me and too you know the persons behind the disruption which brought unmitigated negative publicity against the entire Labour movement. This was regrettable. The subsequent rescheduled election was done with the active participation of all the key veterans that are of the Labour movement of the Nigerian Labour Congress. People who had played very important roles in Nigeria Labour Congress in the past and everybody put everything to ensure that there was a free and fair election. Those of you who were journalists you witnessed the sinanigan that took place to try to again disrupt the election but for the vigilance demonstrated by the security people who had clear instructions not to allow a repeat of what happened at the international conference Centre.
It was really unfortunate that our colleagues who lost that election refused to accept the verdict of the workers and if you are a democrat, you can’t refuse to accept the verdict that this time, people are not comfortable with you for whatever reason and therefore take the natural step of waiting for another opportunity to be able to put yourself forward again to be elected. The fact that our comrades went on to say they were the faction of NLC and after that go to float another Centre or purport to float another Centre again is not something that we should be dancing about because in all of these the interests of average workers is not what is at stake.
You were part of those trying to reconcile the people, but what went wrong along the line that these people now decide to float another centre?
It is clear that, that has been the intention for long because as far as I know, Ajaero and Ayuba had signed a statement just before the May Day that they would cooperate and have a joint May Day which they will all participate. That understanding which was broker by Sunmonu leadership of the Conciliation Committee wasn’t follow and our colleagues went to Organise their own version of May Day in Lagos
But I think the point needs to be made, following the very concerted efforts we made in 2004 and 2005 to stop President Obasanjo from balkanizing the NLC, and from liberalizing the process of registering a Centre from the initial Bill to the National Assembly, which says any two unions can form a federation and we were able to make our case before the Senate and House of Representatives and we eventually arrive at a compromise of 12 unions. I didn’t think that if our comrades were not active participants because they were not in the leadership of their respective unions, anybody who now think, that it was possible to now go and dismember the NLC as it is will just be living in some illusion because the sweat of Nigerian workers, the sweat of the leadership, both past and present have been invested in the unity we already have.
In any case if you read the 2005 Amendment Bill, you will see that it is an exercise in futility. Our colleagues who have been from the unions who are affiliated to NLC or the TUC can’t opt out and say they are going to form another Centre, this is the law, that you can’t leave an existing federation to go and form another federation. I don’t know if you have seen a letter Comrades Ayuba and Kaigama wrote to the Minister of Labour and Productivity. It is very explicit there. Perhaps, these our comrades were aware, this is why they went through one of our comrades who is now a politician to register what Ayuba and Kaigama called phantom unions or she’ll unions without membership. They want to form three or more additional unions in the transport sector, they want to balkanize the Medical and Health, they want to Balkanize JUSUN. JUSUN is the Judicial Staff Union, and it took a long time before we ended up affiliating them in 2010 and a union that is trying to consolidate. Now somebody wants to go and form so called Senior Staff there. The Pension Union, irrespective of the problems that the pensioners are having, one of the unique things about the Nigeria trade union movement is the fact that the pensioners are unionized and they want to go and form two unions in the pension sector. All of these is probably a fall back position that if a law says that you can’t have old unions within existing federation opt out, then they would go and form so call unions where there is hardly membership and start parading themselves as a federation.
I am particularly not happy that our comrades have refused to be patient because Comrade Ajaero just turned 50 few years back, he is the general secretary of his union and he doesn’t need tenure elongation, so if you contest for something this time and you don’t get it, make better preparation in four years time and not to go to try to cause the type of problems they are now being caused for the movement.
What will be the impact of this development on the workers you are supposed to fight for and protect their interests?
Of course, it creates avoidable destruction. Under normal circumstances, those who won the election ought to be thinking of how to solve the many problems confronting the workers but they spent the better part of two years looking at their back, and then having to contend with this false illusion that there is a division withing the rank.
People need to realise, if in the wider politics if we have had the type of situation where after President Jonathan clearly lost the election he says I am not accepting.
Of course, we would not be blaming President Buhari that after winning the election he is not keeping to his mandate. We would be saying that the man is being detracted by this person who lost the election. So, in another two years I am not sure that Ayuba and members of his team will not have an alibi if they do not fulfill their campaign pledges. I hope they would not attribute it to the fact that they have been detracted all this while.
Can’t NLC, TUC seek legal means to settle the issue, since you said what they were doing is illegal?
What I said was that the President of NLC and TUC had written to the Minister of Labour and pointed at the aspect of the labour law, both the original law and 2005 Amendments. The original Trade Union Act says you can’t parade yourself as a union or a centre unless you are registered. So, by our comrades going about saying they are a United Labour Congress, even as the minister and the Ministry of Labour have said they have not registered a new centre is not exactly following the law and ideally this shouldn’t be happening. Secondly, I don’t think it is the responsibility of our colleagues at the leadership of NLC and TUC to go to court. The ministry knows what to do. It is either that our comrades have met the requirements and new union will be registered or they do not meet the requirements. But in the interim, Nigerians should not be confused with this thing that Comrade Ajaero is now the president of the so called United Labour Congress because they haven’t been registered and they should have the patient till they get the registration.
But the leadership of ULC said the same Obasanjo who ensure the formation of the NLC in 2005 also liberalised the labour movement, and the law allowed them as such. Do you subscribe to this?
I want to be quoted as saying that Nigerian workers deserve unity and this has been there from 1975 when during the Apene Cemetery Declaration, the four centres decided they would fused into a single labour centre. So you comrades who are covering the labour beat need to continue to remind and educate Nigerians that if anybody now comes and he is claiming that it was Obasanjo who brought about the current NLC, the person is ignorant of the history of the Nigeria Labour movement and that this is not true. The NLC had already been formed in 1975 and it was those who lost, who couldn’t get position in NLC that now petitioned the Muritala/Obasanjo administration to intervene in the NLC and that was what led to the 1976/78 reorganisation of industrial unions from nearly a thousand into 42 industrial unions and cumulated with the February 28, 1978 election in which Sunmonu emerged in Ibadan to be president of NLC. Over the years, the NLC had defended this position at the ILO each time it came before the Freedom of Association Committee, when people say the NLC was a creation of government. The NLC leadership, from that time up to the present had always made the point that we had already taken this decision and government attempted to take control but we took our movement back.
and then