By Victor Ahiuma-Young

AHEAD of next month’s election of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, indications have emerged of mounting pressures to alter the list of cleared candidates by the Credentials Committee, CC, for National Delegates Conference, NDC, where new NLC leaders would emerge.

This among other contentious issues may have informed the reasons NLC summoned a meeting of its National Executive Council, NAC, and National Executive Council, NEC, for today and tomorrow in Abuja.

Vanguard gathered that since the list of cleared candidates was made public by the CC on Tuesday January 6, 2015, NLC has allegedly been under intense pressures from external forces to alter the list.

Though no agenda was listed in the letter of invitation for today and tomorrow’s meetings, Vanguard gathered that one of the issues for discussions is the reports of the CC for the NDC.

However, this portends a greater danger, a retired labour leader, warned.

According to him, CC could neither report to NAC nor NEC, insisting that “if candidates have been disqualified by CC, neither NAC nor NEC can revise it. Unless it was found out that the reason for the disqualification was caused by the secretariat and not the candidate. For example, if a candidate was disqualified for not including his or her passport in the form submitted to the CC, and it was later discovered the candidate actually submitted his or her form with the passport, but was mistakenly omitted in the form by secretariat staff, there is a case. But where candidates failed to fill their forms properly as required, or where unions outside that of the candidates nominated such candidates, there is nothing either NAC or NEC can do because it is a constitutional matter.”

Similarly, at a briefing yesterday, Mr. Issa Aremu, a Vice President of NLC, who is unopposed as one of the Deputy Presidents of NLC in the coming election based on the list of contestants already published by the NLC, warned “any attempt to reopen the list of nomination will be unprecedented in the history of NLC’s Delegates Conferences and is deemed illegal, unconstitutional and certainly unacceptable.”

He said “it is like saying The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC should reopen nomination process after buffeting us with the menu of presidential candidates cleared. It is like setting the nation ablaze.”