Nigeria Labour Congress has insisted on the planned protest, despite the union’s meeting with President Bola Tinubu
Addressing reporters at the Labour house on Wednesday, the NLC President Joe Ajaero, said it will continue with today’s scheduled protest despite Tuesday’s meeting with President Bola Tinubu.
Ajaero told journalists that the meeting with the president was never meant to cancel the protest.
“The meeting with the president yesterday never meant we cancelled the protest. We never spoke to the press on the cancellation of the protest.
“NLC is an organisation that has its own channels of communication. We never released any information that the protest was cancelled.”
Ajaero pointed out that none of its protest letters had been responded to by the presidency.
He explained that NLC had written multiple letters to the President since 17 June regarding the state of physical, food and financial security in the country.
“It took this issue of action basically to protest and to listen to the physical and financial insecurity the workers are facing and yesterday. Through the governors forum and the progressive governors forum, we were able to secure a meeting with the president and we listed all the issues including the crisis in the academic institutions,” he added.
In Enugu, Gombe, and Kebbi workers condemned Nigeria’s worsening insecurity, warning that schools, markets, farms, and even political offices are no longer safe, and accusing the government of failing in its primary duty to protect lives and property.
In Enugu, the NLC State Chairman, Fabian Nwigbo, led workers through major roads of the metropolis, chanting solidarity songs and wielding placards with slogans such as “Nigeria is bleeding,” “End terrorism, banditry and kidnapping now,” and “Poverty fuels insecurity—create jobs, support local industries.”
Addressing the crowd, Nwigbo painted a grim picture of the nation’s security situation:
“The environment is not safe for anybody in Nigeria. Our school children are not safe, teachers are not safe, workers are not safe, farmers are not safe, travellers are not safe. Nobody is safe anywhere,” he said.
