The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, has said it owns the Labour Party (LP) and as such elected party candidates must meet the union to discuss its programmes.
The labour president, who said this during a courtesy visit to some unions in Lagos on Thursday, revealed that it would continue to be involved in politics so as to bring matters surrounding the welfare of workers to the front burner of programmes and policies of government.
The unions included National Union of Electricity Employees, National Union of Banks, Insurance, and Financial Institutions, and Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers.
Ajaero said the labour movement owned the Labour Party since it has the ideology of the working class movement with its charter of workers’ demands.
“We have an era that we are entering: era of politics, and we will not shy away. The Nigeria Labour Congress will be involved in politics. We are already involved in politics. NLC has a political party: the Labour Party, and LP participated in the recent elections.
“Nigeria must exist before we practise our unionism. Anybody, who emerges as the president of Nigeria will work with us, and the rights and privileges of the workers must be guaranteed. The current wage system, casualisation policy, and outsourcing are anti-worker; with such policies, we can’t be our brothers’ keepers,” Ajaero said.
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He further encouraged union members to show interest in politics, saying, “We have not been managing it by ourselves. We have been allowing people from outside to now answer LP.”
Ajaero urged members to continue enlightening workers in the country about the Labour Party.
“That is what we are going to impose on them. Even the ones that have emerged as senators or House of Representatives members, they must, as a necessity, meet with us and we will give them our programmes. That is the whole essence of thinking of LP in the first place; so that their actions, inaction, and utterances will reflect the affairs of the labour movement, and there should be no pretences about it,” the NLC chief explained.
He pointed out that “we are not saying that people cannot belong to any party of their choice, but we have a party where whatever we discuss here, we take it there as workers.
“Where, if we want new minimum wage, we take it to the people that represent us there; all these issues concern the workers, and we should no longer shy away from it.”
