NLC Calls for Renew Commitment in Tackling Insecurity

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC has said with the increase in insecurity in the nation, there is a need to renew commitment in tackling all forms of vices in the country.

The NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, stated this Thursday at the National Executive Council NEC meeting in Abuja.
He noted that the country’s increased insecurity issue had become very problematic, stating that the union will not fold its hands and watch Nigerians engage in ethnic-religious disputes stressing that “the dangers are too significant to ignore.

“When the security situation in the country started getting out of hands, we called for a `rejig’ of the leadership of our national security apparatus.
“Now that we finally have new sets of service chiefs in play, we demand that the lapses of the old be identified and corrected.
“We call for a new verve of zeal and commitment in the war against terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, communal unrest, and clashes.

“We must never get to that point where we surrender the initiative and paraphernalia of sovereignty to autonomous state actors and to forces of state capture, ” he said.
He said that from now on, the NLC would revisit the resolutions of the last Delegates Conference that called for decisive proactive steps by Congress to promote the security of lives and property, particularly those of workers and their families.

Wabba noted that amidst the global pandemic, the economy of the nation had continued to strive. He, however, called on the government to revise the refineries in the country.

“For Nigeria, the story is a tale of mixed fortunes. Simultaneously, the increase in the demand for crude oil has occasioned higher prices in the international commodities market.
“Leaders of our movement, as we all know, we had engaged the government each time they went contrary to our agreement and increased the prices of petrol or hiked electricity tariff.
“We had successfully forced the hands of government on those occasions to reverse, suspend or reduce the pains they had brought upon Nigerians.
“While we look ahead to a better year for Nigerian workers, the current economic indicators point otherwise, ‘he said.
The NLC president also called on states who were yet to implement the National Minimum Wage of N30,000, signed into law on April 18, 2019, to do so as workers were not going to wait forever.

“Unfortunately, the worse violators of the national minimum wage law are employers in the public sector, especially state governors.
“We should consider the use of the court of law to assert the sovereignty of our rules and compliance to same.
“We are also mindful of national minimum pension for our pensioners. Section 173 of Nigeria’s Constitution demands a review of minimum pension every four years. This must be dutifully complied with.

“By this time, it is expected that all the states in Nigeria should have concluded negotiations on the substantial increase in salaries owing to the new national minimum wage, he said.