Why NLC President Omar wants me out – Comrade Odah

Recently, there was a disclaimer on you by the Nigeria Labour Congress, an organization where you have worked since 1987.  What led to that? It was a desperate effort by Comrade Omar, the NLC president, with his colleagues, who feel that the best way to edge me out of the Congress is to criminalise and […]

Recently, there was a disclaimer on you by the Nigeria Labour Congress, an organization where you have worked since 1987.  What led to that?

It was a desperate effort by Comrade Omar, the NLC president, with his colleagues, who feel that the best way to edge me out of the Congress is to criminalise and demoralise me by that disclaimer, though I have worked with the NLC for 24 years and have spent almost half of that 24 years at the apex as the head of the secretariat.  It goes without saying that you shouldn’t normally mete out this type of treatment except you so intensively hate the person.  Normally, if a messenger worked for you for 24 years, you cannot take such extreme measures by declaring such person as no longer your staff in the way the NLC did, except you have evidence of such grievous offence against him.

Is it  a tradition in  the NLC to make a disclaimer of any staff who resigns or is asked to go?

Absolutely No!  In the history of the NLC since 1978, I can’t recall one single instance when that occurred. What happened was just a malicious thing by the Omar led leadership with the hope to tarnish my reputation and name, which I have built in the course of working diligently in the last 24 years.

There were indications that you are asked to proceed on leave on health grounds and it didn’t go down well with you.  Why didn’t you want to go on leave when your health was failing?

If you look at the correspondences that took place between myself and the president of the NLC, you will discover that those were foundations for the malice. It was the  very first allegation floated in the course of the plot to have me removed from the NLC.  When on March 11,  the National Administrative Council of the NLC asked me to go on leave, they didn’t say I was asked to go on leave on account of my health.  They couldn’t have indicated they were doing this because prior to this, there wasn’t any instance or evidence of my being hospitalized on the grounds of my ill-health.  I have  just come out of the coordination of the biggest delegates conference of the NLC, which had over 2,000 guests and delegates.  In the history of the NLC, that was the first time we are having a conference of over 2,000 delegates.  We had a very successful conference which obviously was the primary function of the General-Secretary.  There was no indication that I had any health challenge.  Like I said, this was an orchestrated lie on the part of Omar to try and justify the decision that was taken on me, which wasn’t correct.

Why did the National Administrative Council agree that you should go on leave?

Well, on the basis of what was told them by Omar. As part of the plan to find a way that will avoid controversy, Omar went to plant false stories about my health status, which I challenged in one of my correspondence to him.  Since he wasn’t a medical doctor, the best administrative thing to do was to have a proper medical panel to examine my state of health.  Of course, that was not done. Subsequently, he went on to tell another lie that I have not gone on leave for the past 12 years and, therefore, the decision to have me go on leave was to take these 12 years leave.  The truth of the matter was that I have only three years outstanding leave, from 2008 – 2010, because my leave year from 1999 to 2007 had been commuted in May 2007, soon after Omar became president of the NLC, and I had been paid N 1.6 million in lieu of these leaves. It  was approved by Omar and the payment was made by the Finance Department of the NLC and the records are there . So, it was strange to me when Omar was sending letter to me that I had not gone on leave for 12 years when he knew it was for only three years.

It was alleged that you collapsed in 2010 and as a result of that you had partial stroke and you were flown to South Africa?

In my response to the exaggeration on my health situation, let me say for record purpose. On the 5th of January, 2010, I became ill and on the 7th of January, I went to South Africa unaided and unaccompanied.  So, my collapse and having partial stroke and being rushed to South Africa was a complete lie.  On March 8th I started treatment and within two weeks I came back to Nigeria after regaining back my health substantially, and went back to perform my duties remarkably well.  I went back to office immediately I arrived Nigeria and in the past 12 – 15 months, there was no complain about the state of my health.  Omar had misinformed the public about the state of my health and he has no right to do so because he is not a medical doctor.  Even a person’s personal physician has no right to disclose one’s state of health.

Last year, when you had your 50th birthday, Omar praised you to high heavens, that if it were not for your hard work and service for nearly three decades, the NLC would not have been what it is today.  What happened between that period and now leading to your exit?

Between March and August 24, 2010 when I turned 50, we are talking of a period less than six months. Within that nothing dramatic happened, except that Omar, as NLC president, found new alliances, new friends and he was told that he needed to return as NLC  president.  He needed to sacrifice myself and Peter Adeyemi.  As you pointed out, the tribute that was published about me had four contributions by the four NLC presidents whom I had worked with Comrade Ali Ciroma, Pascal Bafyau, Adams Oshiomhole and Omar, who was the fifth that I had worked with till that time.  You could go and look at the testimony of each of these people I had worked with; my commitment was absolute.  You need to go back to Omar and ask him what happened under six months and why he is at the centre of false allegations being peddled about me

You have worked with Ciroma, Bafyau, Oshiomhole who are past NLC presidents.  Have you talked to them on your predicament with Omar, and if you have, what is their stand?

From the correspondences that are going on between me and Omar and the leadership of the NLC, I’m very convinced and it was clear that they are not going to fault me on any wrongdoing.  I didn’t think it was necessary to go talk to anybody outside the current leadership of the NLC.  I thought that the leadership of the NLC that I left had integrity to see, judge and act in the right way. Unfortunately, I have been mistaken.  What I have to do is to document all that has transpired between me and the leadership of Omar and send to the National Administrative Council of the NLC.  When they read and digest it, they would see that Omar had only turned against me to have me removed from the NLC and they would reverse themselves.

You’ve said the NLC president is waiting for a new alliance to enable him re-contest and continue as president. Were you against his return as president of the NLC?

Contrary to this, I can say I had worked closely with him and my understanding is that we understood each other very well, along with Peter Adeyemi because there was no issue that had to do with policy that the three of us will not first of all discuss before going to wider organs of the NLC to articulate them.  However, I understood there are other forces outside the NLC who felt that some persons, including myself, are too powerful and too independent and couldn’t be ask to do what clearly is not in the interest of the workers of this country. They waited till the delegates conference where Omar is going to ask for re-election to try and ambush him.  I think in the process, he was made to undertake that he was going to dispense of myself as general secretary and Adeyemi as deputy president  because the two of us are seen as his foremost backers.  Omar was bent on returning and felt he needed these powerful forces, so I needed to be sacrificed.

You talked of his not being comfortable because of you being powerful.  Can you tell us some of the things he couldn’t have done as NLC president if you had stood your ground?

I really didn’t see myself as powerful in the NLC because all I was doing was try to stick to the principles of the NLC and collective agreements and insisting that once there is collective agreement on a given issue, they must remain until a collective majority say they are no longer obtainable.  People think I’m independent-minded.  Obviously, I came to the NLC as somebody who was quite mature; it was close to my 27th birthday. I had finished a post-graduate programme and I had a strong view of what a working class should be in the country.  These are some of the things which made the then leadership under Ciroma wanted me to come and work with the NLC.  Of all the four of us who were recruited directly from the students movement, I was the only one who was given the highest responsibility as general secretary.  People felt I was doing the right thing; I was pursuing the right causes for the Nigerian worker and, having been in that position for nearly a decade, I didn’t see why I should change from what I believed in.  Each time we had an issue and I didn’t say what they wanted to hear, some people in the NLC would not be happy and I think this is also part of my sins.  Eventually, they got Omar to plot my removal from the NLC.

There is this insinuation out there that some labour leaders  use the NLC to make money.  How true is this?

I think there have been a number of allegations to that effect.  A number of people I have worked with before, even up to the present, are not as clean as they want the public to think they are. My philosophy is that comrades who are working for the workers, must not dabble into things that may tarnish their names and the name of the movement.

So, I want to give people and my colleagues the benefit of doubt that people who choose to work for workers welfare should not be people who will go and betray them, in terms of collecting state patronage.

Were you ever tempted with state patronage?

Well, in my years as general secretary, I can tell you that there were bound to be temptations, but you must have a strong will to resist it.  With all sense of confidence, we were not found wanting in the course of doing what we did for the NLC.  We never betrayed our movement, the NLC on account of material benefits and this much Omar said on my 50th birthday.  In fact, he did say I had every opportunity to enrich myself but I didn’t.  The impression really is that once you are dealing with government people you can easily fall prey.

Now, you have written to the National Executive Council. What do you expect from them?

Well, I expect that on the basis of the information that has been forwarded to them, they would re-evaluate the decision that was taken on me.  I gathered that when Omar went to tell them I was running a parallel secretariat, some of them, particularly the Judicial Staff Union, ASSU, Textile Union, among others, insisted they should hear my own side of the issue before they take such drastic action against me.  Our constitution did say that if anyone is accused of any wrongdoing, he should be given the chance to defend himself. I was not given the opportunity to face my accusers to defend myself.  My point is that the NLC, which has championed the cause of workers against wrongful termination by employers of labour, either government or private sector, cannot be seen to act in this way because it will set a bad precedence which will become inimical to the interest of workers in Nigeria, as a whole and trade unions as well as workers in the NLC.

Since this controversy started have you called the NLC president?

No, he has not called me.  I have had cause to call him once, but he refused to pick my call. He realized that I was coming to office one day.  He found a way to excuse himself and sneaked out.  Before the delegate conference, people in the union, including the teachers union where he belongs,  made efforts to have me and Omar sit together and iron things out, but for reasons known to Omar not to have me confront him, he made it difficult for us to meet.

Are you taking legal action or returning to the NEC of NLC?

I do hope that I won’t have to go to other institutions, such as the Public Complaints Commission, the Committee of the National Assembly and others.  I am doing all these to avoid the possibility of taking the NLC to court.  I do hope that I won’t have to be pushed into doing this.