United Labour Congress (ULC) not faction of NLC – Ajaero

General Secretary of National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), Comrade Joe Ajaero and the President of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) Igwe Achese ,recently formed  a  labour centre, the United Labour Congress (ULC). Ajaero, the first president of the centre, speaks with some group of journalists in Abuja on the plan […]

General Secretary of National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), Comrade Joe Ajaero and the President of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) Igwe Achese ,recently formed  a  labour centre, the United Labour Congress (ULC). Ajaero, the first president of the centre, speaks with some group of journalists in Abuja on the plan to get ULC registered.  

With the launch of United Labour Congress (ULC), there will be three labour centres in the country: the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC), and the ULC; if eventually registered; what is the future of labour movement in Nigeria with three labour centres?

Pre-1978, there were four labour centres in Nigeria, including the United Labour Congress. Then, it was United Nigeria Labour Congress, and Obasanjo came, they tried labour leaders, banned so many of them, people like Wahab Goodluck, the prominent labour leaders from participating in labour movement. With that dictatorial muscle, they brought everybody together and you must belong to a single labour centre. It is not the culture of Nigeria labour movement to have a single labour centre but for the military. That is the last feature of the military dictatorship in the labour movement, the issue of having one labour centre. The military forced everybody together. Now the thing played up again in ’88 when we had the democrats and the progressives, trying to split, but because we were still under military dictatorship, the atmosphere for them to have their separate centres, based on their ideological persuasion was not there. So, at the end of the day it took some years; people came up to say o’kay, let us come together.

Incidentally, the same Obasanjo came again around 2002/2003 and saw that under democratic environment you cannot compel people to remain in one room even if they don’t want to be there. You looked back at Section 40 of Nigerian Constitution which says you have the right to form and belong to any trade union of your choice, religion or political affiliation and it is in exercise of that that the TUC was registered. Incidentally, TUC was registered as the first labour centre with the number 001. NLC doesn’t have a registration number today, up till now. If somebody is telling you about registration or no registration, they have not done that. If it is all about receiving licence or certificate after the amendment of plural labour centres, they don’t have that. Let nobody deceive himself, TUC is 001 and there is no 002 as at today. In as much as I wouldn’t want to go into controversy, the atmosphere has been opened for people to belong to labour centres with some criteria; which is to avoid mush-rooming of labour centres. They now get some conditions including that there must be twelve industrial unions before you can apply for registration and part of the last features required for you to register is that you must have a conference where you adopt a constitution, where you adopt a name and where you elect officers. These things should be forwarded to the Ministry of Labour and the same Labour Act made it clear that after this you can start operating as a labour centre including collection of dues. Now in exercise of this, that is what we are trying to do. We are not fighting anybody, we did not attack anybody, and we would not attack anybody. That is the origin of it. So I am saying that for the fact that we have three doesn’t mean we cannot have four and if we had four in 1978, when we didn’t have these number of companies, these number of unions, and these number of workers, the tendency for us to have more is now, if it will serve our purpose. 

 Many are of the opinion that with the pluralisation of labour movement in Nigeria, workers would suffer more?

I don’t think so. That is why I stated that there were four from the beginning. So why now pluralise? Pluralise to what? Today, what we have is three, they have not been pluralised. Even these three cannot even finish addressing the problems of the workers. Since the unfortunate thing that happened in NLC in the last two years, I will tell you that nobody from my own group has the NLC attended to their problems, nobody, whether when we were picketing Ikeja or whatever, it is internal here. So, for you to now appropriate to yourself a power to attend to our problems when our problems are not being addressed, we will now have to look for a way of solving our problems and this is important. So I don’t think it is pluralisation but there is room independently for mergers and acquisition. If in the course we are registered and we are not doing well we will be swallowed by a stronger centre or we have an arrangement with other centres to be one but not by compulsion.

Why do you think that this is the right time for you to come up with another centre ?

I think we should stop being fixated. The solution to the crisis is what has happened. We have sat down, we thought in various ways about it. How do we do this? We resolved to forget about it. We discovered that even the people we are equally operating with will not agree on any of those issues we have decided jointly. We discovered that on daily bases, it is either they are sending Police, or EFCC or whatever to you to say you did this, or arranging some people from their own sector to send petition against you. That level of undermining you when you are together or when you want to be together does not help any matter. I want to tell you today that if me and Igwe are with the NLC, Ayuba can’t make a statement, he will not function. I am not trying to boast. And now the lull in the labour movement would have been attributed to internal wrangling. Let me repeat it. If I attend a meeting, he is there, I am there, Igwe is there, and we are all there with him, of course, we know him more than the people working with him now, on daily bases we may be carrying chairs and whatever. That will be a big disgrace to the movement. I have tried to apply this policy of staying away even after the conference. He can’t mobilize more than me to have taken over the secretariat, but it appears people still don’t understand that we don’t want the collapse of the labour movement. I can’t see the current move as a way of undermining the labour movement. 

Do you have the required numbers of affiliate trade unions based on the extant labour law and have you met all the necessary procedures for registration?

I want you to leave that. If we are 11 unions and we want to register and the law says 12, they will not register us. Get this right because I know why I am saying this. If I know that it is 12 and I am going there with 11, you can see the foolishness on my part. It then means no one will listen to me. That is why I say we have to de-emphasize that area. But I am telling you, more than 12 unions left from the NLC, and I am telling you that unions from the TUC and unions that are not affiliated to any for now are into this. This is not a faction of NLC, there are unions from TUC, there are unions that are not affiliated to NLC and TUC and there are those unions from the NLC that pulled out, which I can count up to 12 or more. They now come together, to have a kind of mega arrangement to form this centre.

 If somebody is saying it is not up to 12, you allow the people who are responsible to count and know whether those unions are registered or not; because it is the same organization that registered those unions that we are taking these names to; when they look at their records and they were not registered, they drop them. So, if we do this, I think we will be reducing tension. Some people said they are not up to the numbers or you are up to the numbers. Like I was trying to explain to you, this is not a faction of NLC having a labour centre, no! This is a mega arrangement, unions from the Trade Union Congress, whether one or two or four or five; union that were not affiliated before. The point I am making is that the unions that pulled out of NLC are enough to register. We didn’t go to register those ones that left from NLC as a centre so the aim will not be defeated as if it is a faction. We have to align and start this process. So the NLC and TUC alone cannot be fighting us when we have people who were not aligned with any of the centres before.  If NLC is challenging that NUEE is still its member, they can then write a letter to us that you are still our member and you cannot take that step, you don’t have the right. That is the area we can go to. Even if we are two or three, let them reject it based on that number. Like other conditions you asked, we are trying to present them, if there are other conditions that they felt we have not met, they can reject it. 

What is your ideology?

Workers’ centrism. The workers first, which means if the worker is hungry, it will affect us. If he doesn’t have any salary increase, it will affect us.