APGA, NULGE, NLC flay sack of Anambra natives from Abia

BY ENYIM ENYIM

ONITSHA- All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE and Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, in Anambra State, have condemned the recent sack of about 1,800 Anambra natives by Abia State Government over the new minimum wage.

Speaking in separate interviews, State Secretary of APGA, Mr Okoli Akirika, said the action of Abia State Government contravened the 1999 constitution that a citizen of Nigeria could live and work in any part of the country without molestation or discrimination.

Calling on the state governor, Chief Theodore Orji, to rescind his decision and recall the sacked workers, Akirika cautioned that failure to do that would create social inequilibrium, economic dislocation and political upheavals.

He said: ”The sack of Anambra indigenes by Abia State Government is not acceptable to APGA in Anambra State. Apart from negating the clear provisions as amended, it is not brotherly and has every tendency of breeding bad blood between two sister states.”

In the same vein, President of NULGE, Mr Jerry Nnubia, described the sack of Anambra workers in Abia as an unhealthy development, saying Governor Orji’s action amounted to sowing a seed of discord amongst the five South-East states and beyond.

Nnubia called for the scrapping of the South East Governors’ Forum on the grounds that it had failed to address the problems of the people of the zone which the forum was set up to do by the founding fathers.

In his reaction, Chairman of Anambra NLC, Mr Patrick Obianyo, said the sack of the workers was highly regrettable, saying it would generate bad blood amongst the people of the Igbo race at a time when peace and unity were being preached in the zone.

He also called for the scrapping of the South- East Governors Forum on the grounds that it had out lived its usefulness in the country, and the South-East in particular.