By Kamsi Anayo
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has condemned President Bola Tinubu-led administration’s harsh economy policies against Nigerian workers and masses.
A statement by the President of NLC, Comrade Joe Ajaero, on Tuesday, said that Federal government did not take into consideration the consequences of such unpopular proposals on Nigerian workers and masses.
He said that President Tinubu-led
government since its inauguration on May 29, 2023 continued inflicting mindless and heartless pains on the populace one after the other without the decency of embracing the tenets of democracy which requires wide and deep stakeholder consultation on weighty matters of state.
He said the decisions included seeking the approval of the National Assembly to obtain another tranche of external loans worth N500b from the World Bank for the purposes of carrying out a phantom palliative measure to cushion the effect of its poorly thought-out hike in the prices of Premium Motor Spirit.
“Remember that the U$800m which was already proposed before the devaluation of the Naira by this government was worth about N400b then but is now worth about N650b after devaluation. It is from this, it proposes to bring out N500b for distribution.
“The proposal to pay N8,000 to each of the so-called 12 million poorest Nigerian households for a period of six months insults our collective intelligence and makes a mockery of our patience and abiding faith in social dialogue which the government may have alluded to albeit pretentiously.
“The further proposal to pay National Assembly members the sum of N70b and the Judiciary N36b is the most insensitive, reckless and brazen diversion of our collective patrimony into the pockets of public officers whose sworn responsibility it is to protect our nation’s treasury.
“We believe that this may amount to hush money and outright bribery of the other arms of government to acquiesce the aberration.
“It is unconscionable that a government that has foisted so much hardship on the people within nearly two months of coming into office will make a proposal that clearly rewards the rich in public office to the detriment of the poor.
“What this means all this while is that the government is seeking ways of robbing the very poor Nigerians so that the rich can become richer.
“There is no other way to explain the proposal to pay a misery sum of N8,000 Naira to each of the mysterious poorest 12 million Households for six months which amounts to N48,000 and pay just 469 National Legislators N70b or about N149m each while the Judiciary that has about 72 Appeal Court Judges, 33 National Industrial Court Judges, 75 Federal High Court Judges and 21 Supreme Court Judges and a total of about 201 Judges receives a total of N35b or N174m each.
“If these other two arms are projected to receive this, what members of the Executive Council will receive is better left to the imagination of Nigerians perhaps, the balance N150b will go to them.
“These proposals are not just unacceptable to Nigerian workers but are also dictatorial thus undemocratic.
“It is not a product of social dialogue which would have produced collectively negotiated outcomes by critical national stakeholders.
“We had thought that this government given the circumstances of its emergence
ought to have been a stickler to all the preachments of the fine tenets of democracy which would have shored up its image and begins to build legitimacy for itself unfortunately, it seems to be in a hurry to abandon the remaining pretensions to democracy that the previous administration left behind,” Ajaero affirmed.
According to him, the actions of the federal government shows that it does not have trust and confidence in the very Presidential Committee that it set up to take a comprehensive look at the consequences of the Petroleum Product price hike and make recommendations on the way forward to ameliorate its negative impacts upon the citizenry.
“What this means is that the government may actually not be interested in the work of the Committee and may have used it as a window to pretend to Nigerians that it is taking steps towards dealing with the consequences of its policies.
“We do not understand why the federal government would seek to undermine itself as its action suggests. Why not wait for the Committee to sit and come up with the needed recommendations which would then guide government’s fiscal and monetary policies?
“Seeking to borrow and going to the NASS for an approval means that it has already taken decisions on what it wants to do and has a budget thus is in need to borrow to fund these activities. Like they will tell you; it is a fait accompli.
“We reiterate that we do not have confidence in how the data for the never changing 12m poorest households was generated neither do we have confidence in the mechanisms being pursued for the distribution of the cash transfers.
“The history of such transfers especially the school feeding programmes even while the children were at home due to Covid-19 pandemic and the Trader Moni saga fills Nigerians with trepidation reminding us of the continued heist of our collective resources by those in Public office,” he said.
