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I Was Not Aware Of Court Ruling Stopping Nation-Wide Strike, NLC’s Wabba Says

Wabba of NLCThe factional President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, has said that he was not aware of any court ruling restraining the labour unions from proceeding on nation-wide strike, starting from today, Wednesday.

This was even as the NLC sister union, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) announced its backing out of the strike because its members have been duly educated on the benefits of the fuel subsidy removal.

Meanwhile, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal who late last night gave warning that the government would apply the law of no-work-no-pay for any civil servant to go on strike, has equally described the strike action as illegal and that whoever disrupt the workers from performing their lawful duty would be dealt with adequately.

The NLC factional leader, Wabba, who spoke to news men shortly after his faction had a botched meeting with the Federal Government representatives, led by the SGF, said: “we have not been put on notice and we are not aware.

“We have not been served and I can say that as we are here, we have also informed them that we are not aware of any court ruling.”

Wabba, who marched on the streets of Abuja today along with a few of his members said that the congress had not received any ruling from the Industrial Court restraining the NLC from embarking on the planned strike, emphasizing: “we are not aware of any court ruling that has been served on NLC.”
He said that he was leading his team into the strike because the government had refused to reverse the N145 increase of petrol pump price, among other issues.

“The issue and the mandate we have is to the effect that the generality of Nigerian workers feel that the pump price of N145 per litre is too outrageous and out of proportion.
“Therefore, it is something that with the hard economic situation, it is very difficult for them to go by, especially in the context of the quantum of the increase.
“Therefore, even the attempt to try to see how this can be mitigated was not actually made possible at the meeting. We thought that we should not continue in a process where we think the end product has not been able to meet our minimum expectation and this would not bring succour to the larger Nigerian public.
“It is on this decision; we thought that it is not necessary for us to continue in the process as the mandate given to us by the NEC today is the effect of reversal of the pump price especially.”
also speaking to news men today, Wednesday, the SGF said: “anyone embarking on strike is doing so illegally.”
Lawal also said government’s responsibility is to guarantee security of lives and property as well as freedom of movement and association, adding that anyone found in anyway trying to compel Nigerians to do otherwise, would be challenged by the laws of the land.
Furthermore, Lawal said the Federal Government had taken the painful decision to liberalize the petroleum sector, knowing that there could be possible adverse consequences to the comfort of Nigerians.
“But it is a decision needed to be taken at this time and it is the President’s believe that for a better future, painful decisions need to be taken now.
“The government is determined to bring Nigeria out of previous rot and take bold decisions where necessary, with some expected to be painful.
“There is no other choice to this matter; if the President had a choice to take other options that would be less painful than this, he would have gone for it.”

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The SGF explained that the Federal Government, after two consecutive days of deliberations, had full cooperation from the TUC and the Joe Ajaero-led faction of the NLC to set aside the planned strike.
According to him, a faction of the NLC completely agreed with the position of the TUC that they will participate in all the technical committees and that work continues on Wednesday as usual.
He, however, noted that the elected NLC representatives had decided that unless government addressed their demands, they would have no further participation in the process.
“We only received a notice from them on Saturday and it is government position that it is not humanly possible to respond to their demand within the time frame. Government is fully assured that there will be no strike.
“Again, we will like to report to Nigerians that the Industrial Court has given an injunction that no strike should hold by NLC and TUC.
“Government wishes to assure all Nigerians that they should report at their duty posts and go about their jobs as usual.”

This was as the President of TUC, Bobboi Kaigama, said: said: “we want to say that we have disengaged ourselves from this strike because we have been duly educated on the benefits of the fuel subsidy removal.”
Kaigama pledged continued support for government policies that would benefit Nigerian workers.
The Joe Ajaero-led faction of the Nigeria Labour Congress has also backed out of the planned labour strike. [myad]

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