In this Special Report, Iduh L. Onah and Omole Ibukun examine the last eight years of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) under the leadership of outgoing President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, bringing into focus the various dynamics that have shaped and will reshape labour’s engagements in the context of the incoming leadership of NLC vis-à-vis Nigeria’s political economy under whoever emerges as its president.
THE last eight years were not just years featuring Muhammadu Buhari, the President of Nigeria, and Commander-in-Chief of her Armed Forces. For Organised Labour, and the entire working class in Nigeria, it was also eight years of Ayuba Wabba, the Comrade President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
The NLC remains not only Nigeria’s most viable trade union centre, but it also had historically served as the most solid wall of defence for national interest and the mass of the working people against anti-people policies of past administrations.
As Wabba bows out of the Presidency of NLC, an office that even military despots tremble whenever it blows the workers trumpet, there is a general notion and feeling, particularly within the labour movement, that the NLC has become a ghost of its former vitality.
For instance, at least the last five years or so witnessed persistent murmurings within labour circles on the direction, or lack its lack, of the outgoing leadership under Comrade Wabba. On such occasions, veterans wondered how the NLC leadership tended to have given President Buhari a free pass to unquestioningly entrench his anti-people policies.
While veterans may not have openly or frontally castigated Wabba in the media, lamenting the state of affairs at public fora, especially labour-oriented events, have up to now become symbolic indicators of their dissatisfaction with their successor-in-office.
For instance, at the NLC history book launch on September 19, 2022, both Comrades Hassan Adebayo Sunmonu and Adams Oshiomhole expressed their dismay on the declining visibility of the Congress, and called for the rekindling of activism that had defined the NLC as leader of the social movement in Nigeria.
Comrade Oshiomhole was typically frontal in positing that if he were the President of NLC today, and after serving as governor of a state, he was much more convinced that he ought to have fought harder.
Oshiomhole said: “Somebody asked me three weeks ago that with the benefit of hindsight now that you have seen the other side, if you were still the president of NLC, how will you react to situations like this looking at what you did when you were in NLC? My answer is this: “…I said from what I know now, having been governor of a state and having served in government and sat with ministries, not on the other side, on the same table, I am much more convinced that I ought to have even fought harder, and if I am the NLC President today, I will fight even harder.”
Unlike in the past, both during the military and current democratic dispensations, when the NLC was perpetually in battle gear against neo-liberal policies for their potential in impoverishing workers and the masses, since 2015, there has come to exist an NLC-Buhari rapport that seems to have inaugurated an unwritten policy where the NLC intermittently praises Buhari for the bailout given to states, which most of them failed to use to pay salary and pension arrears they owed workers and pensioners.
“Although Wabba had last week in Lagos said the NLC was tired of fighting for the reduction of petrol prices, and challenged Nigerians to use their Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to choose a responsive government to make lives more meaningful for them, he was only proclaiming what his leadership had on the night of September 27, 2020 agreed with government as contained in the communiqué of the engagement with government.”
Since the emergence of Wabba, workers and Nigerians at large consistently recall with nostalgia the leadership of Comrade Oshiomhole for his capacity to mobilise workers and civil society allies for general strikes and street protests against the then President Obasanjo’s penchant for petroleum price increment.
Although barely three months in office in 2007, Comrade Abdulwahed Omar, who succeeded Oshiomhole, had to call out workers, allies in the civil society to shut down the economy against the then new President Musa Yar’Adua who inherited Obasanjo’s programmed sale of Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries.
Another major struggle which the NLC led against the Jonathan administration were the Occupy Nigeria fuel subsidy protests of January 2012, which the Omar leadership of NLC led at some point, but later accused by CSOs of dumping at the most critical time. Notwithstanding the alleged betrayal, the Omar leadership however obtained measurable victory as the Jonathan leadership was forced to reduce the price of petrol, which was sustained until Buhari took over the wheels of power.
Contrary to NLC’s rich history of an uncommon ideological commitment to resistance against any strand of neo-liberalism, Wabba had displayed right from the onset of his leadership signs of deviance from this trajectory.
For instance, when, within his first year as president, Buhari increased petrol price from N87, which he inherited from the Jonathan administration, to N145 per litre, he met a feeble resistance from a fickle NLC leadership under Wabba. The NLC neither called for a general strike nor street protests beyond a press statement uttering illusory ultimatums, a strategy that became the hallmark of the Wabba Congress to the end.
When in 2020, workers and Nigerians were hopeful that the NLC was set to redeem its deeming image in the eyes of the public with a general strike jointly called by NLC and TUC to begin on Monday, September 28, over another round of increment in the price of petrol and electricity tariff, organised labour led by Wabba and TUC President, Comrade Qaudri Olaleye, at an all-night meeting deflated the hope when, without consulting with their organs, called off the general strike.
The suspension of the strike caused ripples within the NLC leadership and labour circles, where the leadership was accused of selling out for cancelling the strike when all was set to shake the government out of its neo-liberal fixation.
In place of the package of strike and protest against the hikes in the pump price of petrol and electricity tariff, the NLC and TUC came up with a communiqué that literally outlined their agreements with government which amounted to a gradual implementation of what were the focus of the resistance they suspended.
Although Wabba had last week in Lagos said the NLC was tired of fighting for the reduction of petrol prices, and challenged Nigerians to use their Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) to choose a responsive government to make lives more meaningful for them, he was only proclaiming what his leadership had on the night of September 27, 2020 agreed with government as contained in the communiqué of the engagement with government. The fire and fury against those agreements, which were centres of discursive analysis on social media, especially progressive platforms, went on for weeks after September 28, 2020.
Notably, since the suspension of that strike and following the feeling that it had tamed organised labour, the Buhari government had continued to celebrate the victory with imperial audacity of hikes in petrol price and electricity tariff, orchestration of petroleum products scarcity, amongst other neo-liberal undercurrents.
Another significant moment under the government’s euphoria of having conquered the NLC was the #EndSARS protests which the NLC refused to participate in or even voice its solidarity. Coming a few weeks after the impromptu suspension of the general strike, and alienated by the silence from the leadership of organised labour; the government, which had at some point been forced to enter into negotiation, felt it could do anything and it ordered the massacre of unarmed peacefully protesting youths in Osogbo, Ogbomoso, Lekki, etc.
It is not only in the area of civil disobedience that the Wabba leadership will be judged as feeble; he is also empirically short in social and institutional capacities. An examination of his stewardship exposes obvious laxity in, for instance, minimum wage negotiation. It was this slackness that made it impossible for the minimum wage, meant to be renegotiated every five years, to be withheld till 2019 by the Buhari administration.
Normally, the minimum wage which was increased to 18,000 naira by the Jonathan leadership in March 2011 was supposed to be renegotiated and implemented by March 2016. But not only did the negotiations for the new minimum wage start far behind schedule, but they also started only after pressures from so many quarters within the labour movement on the NLC. As a matter of fact, the five years interval was given as a maximum interval in the Minimum Wage Act, as the negotiation can be activated as soon as key economic indicators are triggered.
Logically, the hardship in the country since the January 2012 petrol price increment, coupled with continual rise in deregulated diesel and kerosene, all of which hurt workers and the working class generally, ought to have jangled the socio-economic radar of the leadership of a big and historic movement leader as the NLC, that there is no point waiting to mark the maximum circle before a demand is made.
Not only that the Minimum Wage Act was passed late, many states for years failed to implement it for its workers. Even at the moment, many states are yet to fully implement the N30,000 minimum wage while in many other instances, implementation has begun but arrears of many months are still unpaid.
Additionally, the NLC has done little to assist state public sector workers in making payment of minimum wage a national industrial relations emergency, just as wages of political office holders.
“Empirically, the past eight years see the rating of the NLC deemed in its former spheres of influence. The leadership of an NLC that at its peak of visibility and activism incurred the wrath of President Obasanjo who while trembling on live television said he cannot tolerate Nigeria under him having two presidents – essentially referring to Comrade Oshiomhole as NLC President who then commanded greater public trust and confidence as a result of the NLC’s collective struggles – almost 20 years after, is incapable of coordinating a collective action against a Buhari regime whose policies are far more dangerous and suffocating both the rich and poor.”
To underscore its attitude in placing value on minimum wage, the Wabba leadership refused to implement minimum wage in terms of differentials for its employees for 42 months after the Minimum Wage Act was signed into law. This is said to be the first time any leadership of NLC had delayed a new wage implementation for its employees.
While the new wage had been implemented with eleven months paid as at May 2022, NLC staff alleged that Wabba had refused to pay the balance of 31 months’ arrears.
Aside all these nuances, every socio-economic indicator point to the fact that a new wage regime is due. But rather than the NLC taking the lead, it is Dr Christ Ngige, with all his narcistic tendencies, that is the one justling to do so, obviously a strategy at obfuscation in the run up to the elections.
The NLC has been legendary not only for its doggedness in street and mass struggles against neo-liberal policies, for democracy and human rights; it has also championed the cause of workers against slavish working conditions, especially casualisation. While it had in the past developed an anti-casualisation policy and actually organised campaigns against the malaise, the NLC under Wabba transited from battling casualisation to an enabler as he hobnobs with union leaders who have become apostles of casualisation, with the Food Union leadership being poster boys of redundancy in the food industry.
The NLC, as a fighting organisation of workers, had in the past organised public lectures where it deployed the services of progressive intellectuals to speak on workplace issues or policies of government vis-à-vis public or national interests or global trends that impact of workers existence. These lectures, which sometimes are held once or twice or as often as financially permissible, particularly during May Day activities, are structured to enlighten and strengthen working class consciousness, with participants from trade unions, civil society and students.
While the Omar leadership of NLC had maintained this practice of public lectures, which had strengthened the bond between the Congress and its civil society allies in the context of cross-fertilisation of common ideas and positions, the habit unfortunately faded with Wabba’s emergence, and invariably the affinity that existed between the two waned as NLC’s tentacles regressed, making it a more parochial organisation.
Empirically, the past eight years see the rating of the NLC deemed in its former spheres of influence. The leadership of an NLC that at its peak of visibility and activism incurred the wrath of President Obasanjo who while trembling on live television said he cannot tolerate Nigeria under him having two presidents – essentially referring to Comrade Oshiomhole as NLC President who then commanded greater public trust and confidence as a result of the NLC’s collective struggles – almost 20 years after, is incapable of coordinating a collective action against a Buhari regime whose policies are far more dangerous and suffocating both the rich and poor.
“The question is why do we need this alteration? Why is it necessary that the General Secretary from the inception of NLC, and all these years that the NLC was very effective, and vested with some degree of independence, that he suddenly no longer deserves these powers? Why is it that the NLC President is now vested with both the powers of the General Secretary and that of the President leaving the General Secretary with power to only ‘scrutinize’ and the President to ‘approve? Why?”
Keen observers of the NLC, particularly the intellectual wing of the movement, lay the blame on the gradual weakening of the national secretariat in the constitution of the NLC since the last three delegates conferences of the NLC. According to one of those spoken to by National Record preparatory to this report, and who pleaded anonymity, a trade union is as strong and democratic in relation to the level of awareness of its members and the provisions of its constitution.
According to the source, rank-and-file workers rely on constitutional provisions to push their leaders into action, a situation that was the norm and which made the NLC active in the defence of the rights of workers and people up to the recent past, when he said a combination of two factors – lack of trade union education and a constitution continuously weakened by crafty trade union leaders to serve their personal interests.
According to the source, it is unimaginable that delegates from affiliate unions could condone the amendments that had been done to the NLC’s 2011, 2015 and 2019 constitutions.
“Comrade, if you look carefully at the NLC constitution after every delegates conference since 2011, you will see that gradually, the major focus of the amendments was geared towards appropriating more and more powers to the office of the President of NLC at the expense of the General Secretary or even the organs,” the source said.
According to him, in the 2007 NLC constitution that operated up to 2011 conference, for instance, the General Secretary of NLC under Article 19 did not require consulting with the NLC President before issuing notices of meetings of organs of the Congress. He said even the appointment and removal of the General Secretary has been made very easy as that was the ultimate prerogative of the delegates conference but now longer so.
Challenging one of these reporters to study NLC’s constitutions over the years, the source stated that by the provisions of the 2019 constitution of NLC, Article 19 literally transformed the General Secretary, that was up to 2011 described by the constitution as the ‘Chief Executive Officer of Congress’ to a Chief Clerk of the NLC and compelled to consult the president before activating any of the organs which are the democratic structures of the Congress.
“The question is why do we need this alteration? Why is it necessary that the General Secretary from the inception of NLC, and all these years that the NLC was very effective, and vested with some degree of independence, that he suddenly no longer deserves these powers? Why is it that the NLC President is now vested with both the powers of the General Secretary and that of the President leaving the General Secretary with power to only ‘scrutinize’ and the President to ‘approve? Why?” our source queried.
While this constitutional deficiency might not entirely be the doing or undoing of the leadership but the dearth of vigilant members, Wabba’s body language and his disposition to personalising or arrogating to himself every real and imaginary achievement go to a large extent in stoking disunity in the NLC. At the moment, the NLC, as a core component and driver of the labour movement, has rather been stratified into vain caucuses meant for sharing of positions.
As a result, there is a persistent friction at the expense of idea generation and ideological synergy, all of which combine to defuse the flame of activism that has defined the NLC as an umbrella organisation or Centre of not just workers and the masses, but also an ideal Congress for all shades of progressive, nationalist, patriotic and humanitarian elements.
“The incoming leadership, another veteran counsels, must also note that the democracy Nigeria enjoys today is a product of organised collective struggle led by the NLC and not by political parties or politicians. He therefore pointed out that in a similar vein, and to be able to reverse the current slide in the country’s fortunes, the leadership must act collectively to carry Nigerian people along, to stand up in defiance, and refuse to be cowed or collaborate with the oppressors, and extend the hand of fellowship to critical stakeholders in the civil society.”
Reliable sources at the NLC National Secretariat confided in National Record that the Wabba leadership’s penchant for egoism and accolades as against the driving spirit of collectivism emblematic of the labour movement propelled him to take charge of preparation of documentation for the current delegates conference.
In doing so, a source revealed, Wabba is said to have devised a novel methodology in NLC conference documentation by compiling and printing minutes of NLC organ meetings, press statements under his 8-year leadership as a marker of his achievements. In addition, Wabba is also said to have revived an inhouse publication; ‘State of the Struggle’ or ‘SOS’ for short, which has been out of circulation for over a year, to produce a voluminous edition packaging his assumed achievements in a 35-year stewardship in Trumpian style.
For a number of veterans of the labour movement spoken to by National Record, the incoming leadership of Congress, to be led by Comrade Joe Ajaero, has a huge task at hand. The veterans are on the same page in stressing the point that being able to meaningfully impact on the depressing state of the movement will, among other things, depend on the emerging leadership retaining a deep sense of history backed by the courage for empirical analysis in knowing ‘where the rain began to beat NLC.’
According to one of the veterans, the fate or future of the NLC rests on the shoulders of the emergent Ajaero leadership as it no longer has the luxury of time or the resources in the face of rampant political corruption and capitalist onslaught on working class values in the country.
The incoming leadership, another veteran counsels, must also note that the democracy Nigeria enjoys today is a product of organised collective struggle led by the NLC and not by political parties or politicians. He therefore pointed out that in a similar vein, and to be able to reverse the current slide in the country’s fortunes, the leadership must act collectively to carry Nigerian people along, to stand up in defiance, and refuse to be cowed or collaborate with the oppressors, and extend the hand of fellowship to critical stakeholders in the civil society.
