NLC Leadership Crisis: Wabba Asks Union Workers to Disregard Ajaero’s Labour Centre

Extends olive branch to rivals

Senator Iroegbu

The leadership crisis that has engulfed the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) for the past one year has taken new twist as the NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, warning unionists and workers not to heed the call by the Joe Ajaero faction to form a new labour centre.

Wabba in a statement yesterday vowed to preserve the unity of labour unions and extended a hand of fellowship to all Nigerian workers including members of rival labour groups.

He noted that all efforts were made to reconcile the fractured leadership of the NLC but was rebuffed by both Ajaero and his deputy, Igwe Achese.

Wabba stated: “Our attention has been drawn to news report in which Ajaero, the General Secretary of NUEE, and Igwe Achese, President of NUPENG, claimed they have formed a new labour centre called the United Labour Congress (ULC).

“It will be recalled that following their defeat at the March 2015 rescheduled election in their bid to lead the NLC, these comrades have been parading themselves as president and deputy president of NLC respectively.

“The congress would like to assure our members across the country and the public that the leadership of the NLC is committed to the unity of the working class in the country notwithstanding the latest declaration by Ajaero and Achese. We shall do everything within our power to preserve the unity and coherence of the labour movement which was handed down to us by our forebears in the movement.

“Our comrades, in their ambition to lead Nigerian workers, in February 2015, at the elections which would have concluded the 10th delegates conference of the NLC, disrupted and scattered the ballot papers that were already cast in the full glare of the world.

“This was after delegates had voted to waive the requirement to allow Achese who had been campaigning to be president, to step down to deputy president position, and declare support for the candidacy of Ajaero.

“At the rescheduled election held in March 2015, following the intervention of the veterans of our movement, and with the provision of adequate security, the plot of Ajaero and Achese to disrupt the elections again once it was clear that their combined forces will not deliver them the leadership of Nigerian workers they had so clamoured for, was thwarted, and the election results were successfully announced.”

Wabba further noted that the veterans led by the founding president of our organisation, Hassan Sunmonu, had stepped in to reconcile the congress with Ajaero and Achese.

According to him, this took several meetings, and just before the May 2016 May Day, an agreement was fashioned out with them to drop their claim to the leadership of the NLC and team up with the NLC leadership to hold a united May Day.

As it turned out, he said Ajaero and Achese went ahead to organise a parallel May Day in Lagos despite the explicit commitment and undertaking they gave to the veterans at the reconciliation meeting.

Wabba stated that the duo’s reluctance for reconciliation made Sunmonu, who had chaired the reconciliation meeting all along to express his disappointment with the Ajaero group in an interview July this year.

He, however, noted that two days later, on July 25, 2016, Ajaero and his group authored a three-page letter full of insults and blackmail to the respected founding president of congress. This was intended to effectively end the intervention of Sunmonu and the veterans.

The statement continued: “We wish to further state that despite the antics of our comrades and their refusal to accept the result of a clear democratic contest, we had ensured their inclusion and participation in the affairs of the NLC. In this respect, the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), Ajaero’s union had representation in the state leadership structure of congress and also the National Executive Council of NLC, the Chairman of Kebbi State NLC is from that union, as well as SAC members in Jigawa and a few other states.”

Wabba said it’s ironic that these comrades can’t see the contradiction between their empty rhetoric on wanting to “fight non-payment of salaries” and collaboration with the state to undermine popular action of the working people and the Nigerian masses. And yet when congress was in the frontline forcing their home state government(s) to pay workers’ wages and halt retrenchment of thousands of workers, they were nowhere to be seen.