By Ibrahim Habu Suleiman
The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC as the name implies, is supposed to be the umbrella body of affiliated labour unions in the country. By implication the NLC serves as the vanguard of workers across the length and breadth of this country.
Of course, this is a huge responsibility being the representative of all workers, particularly those in government ministries, agencies and parastatals, the NLC becomes the officially recognised body that negotiates on behalf of workers/civil servants and a host of other professional working class organisations for their financial and other benefits. Such benefits include salaries, allowances, and other entitlements including promotion, increment, leave grants, et cetera, as well as pension and gratuities on behalf of retired workers under the auspices of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP affiliated to the NLC.
All these signify the enormous responsibilities which the NLC shoulders on behalf of workers across the country. At any rate the NLC has been known historically to shoulder all these responsibilities without shirking away from the enormous weight of the onus. And in the cause of the chequered history of the NLC in the country, its activities have tended to run from time to time at loggerhead with the interests of government at the federal, state and local government levels. Of course, the activities of the NLC have never been all so rosy. In Nasarawa State, the challenges before the NLC were even more herculean, not only because the NLC had to navigate through a virgin territory at the creation of the state, but also because of the traditional loyalty to the powers that be which had dragged most workers to being more obsequious to top government functionaries instead of appreciating their own comrades at the helm of NLC affairs.
Needless to say, since the creation of Nasarawa State in 1996, the NLC had assumed its rightful position as the supposed vanguard of the workers by championing the cause of the workers for the improvement of their welfare, their socio-economic well-being and the growth and development of the state as a whole. Thus the NLC ensures the workers (at least those in its affiliated unions) are not only well-remunerated, but also well-taken care of by their employer(s) based on existing labour statutes and the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Of course, the NLCs activities have on many occasions been adjudged to go contrary to the interests of government especially where those at the helm of affairs adhere strictly to the capitalist way of doing things, which would mean that championing the interests of the workers becomes class suicide. All too often this results in running battles between the NLC and the government, which ultimately uses the security forces at its disposal to muscle the NLC, leading to arrests, detention or even banishment as the case might be.
Hence, whenever there is any issue bordering on the infringement of the rights of workers, the NLC usually faces an uphill task against the government which normally has all the security arsenals at its disposal to neutralise the struggles of the NLC; besides corruption has always played a significant role in securing an upper hand for the government.
In Nasarawa State today, the NLC has been divided into two prominent groups: the first includes those adjudged to be anti-government and the second group includes those adjudged to be pro-government. Although both sides have accused each other of selling out (by collecting millions of naira hush money offered by the state government), there is no doubt that the pro-government group has emerged victorious so far, because they now wine and dine with top state government functionaries.
Meanwhile, members of the so-called anti-government group have largely been banished to the remotest parts of the state or to neighbouring states with no news whatsoever of when they would be allowed to return to their respective original places of abode. Unfortunately, this is the sad scenario that today prevails in the state. Comrade Mohammed Abdul, a former NLC state chairman noted while lamenting the ugly situation where a large chunk of the leadership of the state NLC still remains banished from the state capital, expressed concern saying the NLC does not just work like that.
Nevertheless, workers in the state civil service today receive their salaries in full without recourse to the percentage payments that prompted the longest ever strike in the state since its creation. But the state government has continued to withhold the salaries of many innocent workers for their alleged participation in the strike, whereas those banished from the state capital might never be recalled to their stations during the remaining tenure of the Almakura administration. All this has effectively ensured the division of the NLC in the state.
Therefore in this sad, ugly scenario the Nasarawa State government finds unduly ample room to manipulate the NLC or what remains of it. As a result of this situation the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP Nasararwa State council has been the worst hit. Indeed, nothing has been the same for the teeming retirees/pensioners in the state since the outbreak of the so-called 2016-17 recession. Pensioners who retired from April 2011 have been receiving 50% of their monthly pension since September 2016, to date even after the recession was long declared officially over. Of course this is contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and extant labour statutes in the country. Those retirees overdue for payment of their gratuities have been ignored. It has become the order of the day for the state government or the pro-government NLC to announce (on behalf of the state government) the fresh commencement of payment of gratuities to the retirees only for these retirees to be subjected to wasteful journeys to and from their localities for months in vain.
Recently, the state chairman of the NUP, Alhaji Umaru Adoga died, reportedly at the ripe age of seven two. The late Adoga was, days before his death, allegedly embroiled with a section of the state pensioners in bitter disagreement over the NUP chairmans method of approaching the state government regarding the litany of their grievances. Such grievances include the percentage payment of their pension and the failure to pay gratuities to deserving retirees even after public announcements to that effect. If death had a reason to strike, this could have been the most ideal time. May his soul rest in peace. Ameen.
It goes without saying, therefore that the NLC today as the vanguard of the working class in Nasarawa State is comatose. The Abdullahi Adeka-led NLC is more-or-less an arm of the state government. Perhaps, there is the need to introduce a state Ministry of Labour and Productivity as obtained at the federal level so that it could function more appropriately. Abi? However, the truth remains that there is now an urgent need to re-examine the labour-government relationship in the state with a view to delineating their functions and responsibilities to the society. At any rate, workers in the state need a sound leadership not the one that serves two masters, but the type that would inevitably protect the interests of all the workforce not only for the welfare of the workers, but also in the interest of concrete peace (and not the peace of the graveyard) for higher productivity, growth and development of the state and the nation at large.