The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Sunday insisted on embarking on an indefinite strike across the country.
The NLC President, Joe Ajaero stated this while speaking on Arise News, expressing further that the union may declare strike by midnight on Tuesday.
According to Ajaero, the federal government had more than enough time to resolve the dispute and address the concerns of the labour movement but chose not to do so.
NLC had condemned the Federal Government for not providing means to relieve the effect of fuel subsidy removal.
Ajaero during the interview said every Nigerian would have expected by now a concrete result on the federal government-labour negotiations on palliatives.
When asked if he was confident that the planned indefinite strike would be successful, Ajaero said the earlier warning strike achieved about 80 per cent success, despite efforts to sabotage it.
Ajaero accused the federal government of trying to undermine the strike, demonise the NLC leadership, and create division among the trade unions.
He added that if such time and effort were used to seek a solution, it would have been found and the problem would have been solved.
NLC said the mission of the labour movement was to help the poor.
The NLC president also reacted to the concerns of the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) and Manufacturers Association (MAN) over the negative effect of the strike on businesses and the national economy.
Ajaero said NECA should not be saying that the strike would affect the economy when the economy had already been destroyed.
Concerning the concern expressed by MAN, Ajaero, said, “I don’t know if anything is still being manufactured with the situation of things in the country. With the energy cost going up, I don’t know what is being manufactured and what is being sold.
“This is the worry we must all embark on, and address the issue, including the energy cost, to enable them to manufacture very well, because if you manufacture at a higher cost without recourse to the impact on consumers, who are mainly workers that will no longer buy these products due lack of purchasing power.
“I don’t think that MAN has equally made an effort to find out how to solve this problem, they have not complained about the high energy cost, and they don’t even know how workers struggle to come to work, which is very important.” End Quote
