Confab: Oshiomhole tasks labour delegates on Nigeria’s unity

Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State has urged representatives of the labour movement at the ongoing national conference to speak for Nigeria’s unity when those with parochial views champion ethnic agenda.

Speaking in Benin yesterday while receiving leaders of the National Union of Civil Engineering Construction, Furniture and Woodwork Workers, Oshiomhole said: “The Nigeria Labour Congress must be on the side of the Nigerian nation, it must champion national unity. It must never be apologetic on the position it takes on the side of an indivisible, one Nigeria.

“I know for a fact that when the political class assembles to share resources, there is no North, there is no South, there is no East there is no West. I also know for a fact that when the business class meets at board meetings of banks and big businesses and they want to share profits, they share it as if they are from the same womb. They are united by the factor of greed.

“On the other hand, across the North and across the South, across the East and across the West, the ordinary person is united by poverty. People still struggle to have access to pipe borne water. People still struggle to get good education for their children. The elite have chosen the escape route of sending their children to schools abroad. Those who cannot afford outside Africa are pushing their children to other African countries and leaving the Nigerian child under classrooms without roofs or even schools without teachers and where there are teachers, they are of doubtful competence.”

Oshiomhole argued that the possibility of upward mobility for children of the poor is increasingly being reduced. He said: “The implication of the future is clear for the NLC, to organized labour and the progressive segments of the civil society that the children from villages who don’t have qualified teachers and therefore cannot pass Mathematics, English, Physics, Chemistry means that children of the poor can never become medical doctors in this country. They can never become civil engineers, they can never become electrical engineers. Even in politics, they might just be reduced to thugs”.