The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has been under severe attacks. These, resulting from the 21-day ultimatum which it gave to the Federal Government to rescind its decision to cut the wages of workers in the public sector. This came barely a week after a similar measure was applied to the Armed Forces “ similar, in quotes because unlike the workers case, that of the armed forces is the first.
But the ultimatum that was given by the NLC has been drawing a lot of reaction from the Nigerian press and NOT from the workers or their allies. The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) in a statement has already lent the support of Nigerian students to the workers.
No organized or even ˜disorganized group of peasants have decried the threat of the NLC. Rather, these groups see the ˜new posture of the NLC as a sign of good things to come, that the NLC has finally woken up to her responsibilities.
This section of the Nigerian press finds it very ridiculous that an organization which they considered as dead an irrelevant can dare raise its head at this time.
The ˜crisis ground their points on these issues: The Vanguard could not understand where the NLC President Ali Chiroma got his present militancy from; wondering what the NLC was doing during the twenty months of consistent deprivations of the working class by the Buhari regime.
The Nigerian Tribune, perhaps still hallucinating under the spell of Babangida, being the first head of state to grant it interview, took a vitriolic stance, contending that the ultimatum was ill-timed and ill-motivated.
It went on to say that the NLC look on, unconcerned and helpless having been battered, buffeted and cowed by the Buhari/Idiagbon oligarchy when thousands of workers were sent home abruptly, the sheds of their wives bull-dozed and spates of levies took whatever was left from the workers pockets; that the NLC has no moral justification to come up with a threat to a regime that upholds the fundamental rights of the citizens of the citizens to fee speech.
The New Nigerian, on its part, contended despite ample evidences to the contrary, which are daily published by it, that the majority of Nigerians are ready to make more sacrifices, but the workers are just kicking because they were not consulted.
All these reactions and criticisms, must be seen in the perspective of the continuing efforts by the oppressor classes “ owners of these media houses, powerfully backed by government, to ensure the further marginalization of workers, create more room for capital accumulation, and make workers pay for the damaged they have caused to the economy, while the rich and imperialist monopolies reap more profits.
This is only part of the war of attrition being waged against the working class by the bourgeoisie and their faceless writers. In fact, it is the press rather than the labour congress that is using blackmail and intimidation against the workers and their leaders, thereby trying, though unsuccessfully to blur the fundamental issues being raised by the workers.
This is clearly seen, by the reduction of the labour congress, and genuine apprehension of workers to the personality of Ali Chiroma. The equation really seems clumsy because the Nigerian Labour Congress is made up of component parts, and even some labour leaders who are criticizing the leadership of Ali Chiroma are members of the NLC, NEC, and none of them has come out to deny collective decision making process, and accused Chiroma of a one man show.
Moreover, it is axiomatic that unity is a fundamental pre-requisite for any meaningful, consistent and successful workers struggle, and is a well known fact that most of the labour leaders who make up the NLC are both apolitical, and reactionary to the core.
Not only have they been introducing divisive issues into the workers ranks but they use all sorts of weapons including the refusal to pay their check-off dues to frustrate any meaningful action by NLC.
Those accusing the NLC, that it no longer has a right to come out of the doldrums, are only looking for excuses to subvert the interests of Nigerian workers.
But the argument, on NLCs inaction during the last 20 months could be reconstructed the other way round. Let the enemies of Nigerian working people tell us why Major-General Ibrahim Babangida chose to get rid of Buhari/Idiagbon at the time he did, while he was there when Buhari was committing all sorts of atrocities against the people of this country or asking an oppressed people why they have chosen a particular time to throw off the yoke of oppression whiel they had been living with it fro a long time?
We know that when the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) was waging a struggle against the Buhari regime, the same critics ignored the substance of the issues at stake and instead concentrated on non-issues.
These same people, in May 1984, vitriolicly opposed the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) boycott of lectures and misrepresented students. It is also these same critics who aborted the general strike that was organized by the Niger State chapter of the NLC using all forms of
By Rima Shawulu & Festus Okoye
The Standard, Tuesday, December 3, 1985