THE IGNORANCE OF LABOUR TO OUR NATIONAL PROGRESS ON DISPLAY

In yesterdays edition of The Punch newspaper, the below position by one of the leaders of NLC made the headline and one cannot but be shocked that our labour movement is very ignorant of the fact that a critical panacea to the myriad of problems bedevilling our polity can only be found when we convoke a Sovereign National Conference or are they being mischievous because it will be a conference of only ethnic nationalities and will not involve any labour union?. Truly, this labour leaders that knows next to nothing but about wages and salaries are in dire need of education that the quest to true nationhood for the Nigerian state can only be resolved when we find answers to the national question else they will continue in their fight for wages and salaries until one day when the economy will have collapsed with this unitary and going nowhere system of government, then there will be no workers union to use as a platform to agitate. Maybe then, some of them will see reason and be like some new day converts to this school of thought, but whether these ignorant labour leaders see reason now or in the nearest future, we will not relent until we have a genuine Sovereign National Conference (SNC) of ethnic nationalities to discuss Nigeria, failure to do this is akin to postponing the doomsday.
 


Calls for National Sovereign Conference unconstitutional - NLC
by Succeess Nwogu, Ilorin

NLC President, Mr Abdulwaheed Omar advertisement

The Vice-President, Nigerian Labour Congress, Mr. Issa Aremu, has said that the NLC is opposed to the agitation for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference because the call is diversionary and unconstitutional.
Speaking to journalists in Ilorin on Tuesday, he said SNG was no longer a global trend. He argued that since Nigeria had elected representatives, it would be unlawful to convoke the SNC.
He said the position of labour was that Nigerians were not a debating society. Aremu noted that Nigeria should be functional while the citizens should stop agonising.
"We spend all the time agonising and questioning the viability of the country when we should rather organise our thoughts to make the country work. Labour is opposed to Sovereign National Conference. It is moving against the trend of the world and I think it is even wrong to say Nigeria is too big.
"The proposed conference is unconstitutional because with all the imperfections of the existing dispensation, whether we like it or not, we have elected a President who has specific mandate and he got elected based on certain promises to the nation.
"We have constituted the National Assembly. We have 36 governors, they are elected and they must deliver on their mandate. Nobody should short change the system mid-way," Aremu said.
He argued that if the proponents of SNG were serious about their call, they should embark on a massive campaign so that the people could vote them into power.
Aremu, who called on politicians to move with the global trend, alleged that Nigerian leaders were parochial.
He said all ethnic sentiments should be divorced from Nigeria's national life.
The labour leader said it was retrogressive that at a time the world was getting global, Nigerian leaders were not flowing with the tide.
He said globally the use of ethnic nationalities was no longer fashionable, adding that Nigeria was lagging behind in global socio-political and economic trend.
"The day an African-American became the president of the most powerful nation in the world, the United States, colour had ceased to be an issue. How can language and ethnic identity remain an issue? The day Mandela walked out of the prison and became the first democratically elected President of South Africa on a non-racial basis, apartheid was gone.
"It is sad that in 2013 Nigerian leaders are talking of conference of ethnic nationalities. The expectation of the founding-fathers was that by now we should be having a United States of Africa. That is what led to the formation of the Organisation of African Unity. We started before the Europeans even started the European Union.
"The world is towards bigger size not dismemberment of the nation-state. If a bigger Nigeria couldn't compete with one big China, is it a smaller and divided Nigeria that will compete? What am saying in essence is that our leaders should think global," Aremu said.