NLC: Nigerians Should Be Ready to End National Pillage in 2023
Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja
Ahead of next year’s general election, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has asked Nigerians to brace up for the challenge of electing a new leadership that will end the pillage of our national resources and to set the country on the path of sustainable development.
In a New Year message by the NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, the congress said the 2023 general election provides a golden opportunity to take back our country and set her on the path of sustainable development.
“Fellow citizens, it is in light of the developmental deficits, difficulties, and decadence highlighted in the foregoing, that we are called upon to arise as one people to end the national pillage, smash the culture of grab-and-garb, reverse our pervasive rentier economic mentality and consign our divisive politics to the dustbin of history.
“The 2023 general election has delivered in our hands the golden opportunity to take back our country and set her on the path of sustainable development.
“The tinder box of the ballot revolution in the 2023 poll is the Permanent Voters Card (PVC). All voters must safeguard their PVCs jealously. Newly registered voters should endeavour to collect their PVCs from the different collection centres designated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The PVC is our ticket to our dream Nigeria,” he said.
NLC urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other stakeholders including security agencies to uphold the highest standards of professional ethics to ensure free and fair elections.
“It must be one man, one woman, one vote. INEC must ensure that politicians play by the rules and that logistics blues that dogged past elections are addressed in the 2023 general poll. Efforts must be made to ensure that the BVAS system is effectively deployed as the death knell to vote buying and election rigging across Nigeria,” he said.
While reviewing affairs in the passing year, NLC said Nigerians have endured a lot ranging from insecurity, hardship to poverty.
Regarding industrial crisis witnessed during the year, NLC said the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) was elongated due to the recalcitrance of government in the course of negotiations matched with half-hearted gestures.
“With the benefit of hindsight, it is now clear that government’s commitments which led to the call-off of the industrial action were less than altruistic. Till now, government has refused to pay the arrears of salaries incurred during the strike action despite the commitment by university workers to make up for the time lost during the strike. Also, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment has illegally registered two trade unions in a bid to divide and conquer university unions.
“The tragic industrial situation in Nigeria’s universities is symptomatic of the difficulties faced by trade unions in the struggle to improve the working and living conditions of workers and pensioners,” it said.
In the health sector, it said Nigeria currently posts very scary records.
It said the 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) undertaken by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) with technical support by the United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and their partners revealed acute shortage of Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities all over the country.
It added that a media audit of Primary Healthcare Centres across the country, established that only 6,000 out of 30,000 PHCs are functional marking 80 per cent dysfunctionality in our primary health services.
In the energy sector, NLC said that one of the greatest energy crises faced by Nigerians in 2022 was the severe disruption in the distribution of refined petroleum products especially PMS and aviation fuel.
It said that despite the severe hemorrhage presented by the self-sabotage including product scarcity and incessant price hikes, the government has continued to pay lip service to fixing public refineries and building new ones.
The labour also responded to pronouncements by some leading presidential candidates to remove petrol subsidy if elected to office, saying that such statements do not address recovery of local refining, affordable refined products, decent jobs, economic expansion, wealth generation, and shared prosperity.
“The penchant to mouth subsidy removal as solution to government’s criminal neglect of our public refineries is not only wicked but also betrays a predilection to lazy quick fixes, surrendering our economy to foreign interests, transfer of government inefficiency on Nigerians, and enslaving our people with poverty and hardship. We will stoutly resist this neo-liberal agenda,” it said.
NLC said that it has resolved that the Workers Charter of Demands which seeks the prioritisation of the welfare of Nigerian workers should be the parameter for engaging the polity.
