NIGERIA Labour Congress (NLC) has threatened to embark on a nationwide strike over the victimisation of Kaduna State workers by Governor Nasir El-Rufai.
The NLC Head of Information Benson Upah disclosed this in a telephone interview with The ICIR on Wednesday.
Upah said the NLC Chairman Ayuba Wabba had, on Tuesday, said that the union would embark on nationwide strike because the Kaduna State government was victimising workers for partaking in the 3-day warning strike earlier in June.
The NLC, Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity and the Kaduna State government had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to call off the warning strike and negotiate.
However, the NLC said the Kaduna State government had failed to fulfil its part of the agreement.
“The content of that MoU says that the processes adopted by the Kaduna State government would need to be revised because they did not follow due process in sacking workers.
“A ten-person committee was set up to review what the Kaduna state did that led labour to that warning strike, but until the moment I speak with you, the government has not constituted that Joint Committee; we’ve been waiting it has not done so,” Upah said.
He also said that the content of the MoU signed with the Kaduna State government read that there would be no victimisation of workers who took part in the strike action.
“In utter contempt and violation of that agreement, the Kaduna State Government has set in motion processes of sacking workers including 18 lecturers from its state university and some of those lecturers were not even available during the strike,” Upah noted.
He noted that the NLC would embark on the nationwide strike if the Kaduna State government did not constitute the committee or reverse the sack of the workers.
Upah further said that the union had informed the president, Ministry of Labour and Productivity and other stakeholders involved in the agreement earlier reached in May.
“So we are going forth in the exercise of the rights and privileges conferred upon us by the full force of the labour law in Nigeria to scale up this action,” NLC said.
However, he said that the union could suspend the planned action if the government of Kaduna urgently retraced its steps or any other body sufficiently advised it to do so.
The Spokesperson for the Kaduna State government Muyiwa Adekeye did not respond to calls and text messages from The ICIR over the allegations of the NLC.
The ICIR had reported that the NLC embarked on five-day warning strike over the mass sack of more than 21,000 workers and the refusal to pay entitlements to about 50,000 workers by the Kaduna State government.
During the first day of the strike, activities in major sectors, including banks, railway, airport, and hospitals, were put on hold.
The NLC President Wabba and some other protesters were declared wanted by El-Rufai over alleged economic sabotage and attacks on public infrastructures.
However, the warning strike was called off on the third day following an agreement with the state government, the Federal Government and the NLC.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94