By Victor Ahiuma-Young, reporting from Geneva, Switzerland
NIGERIA Labour Congress, NLC, has reported the Federal Government to International Labour Organisation, ILO, accusing it of working clandestinely to proscribe and undermine collective labour relations in Nigeria.

Members of National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, NUTGTWN, during May Day match past.

President of NLC and representative of workers on the Governing Board of the ILO, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, informed the Committee on Application of Standard that the government had forwarded a new bill to the National Assembly, which will distort the nation’s industrial relations landscape.

The NLC also reported the Kaduna and Kogi State governments to ILO over alleged total disregard for the principle of collective bargaining, which constitutes violations of ILO convention 98 for sacking workers indiscriminately and refusal to pay salary of workers.

Wabba told the committee, which meets to review industrial relations in member countries that part of the bill sent to the nation’s parliament sought to proscribe the NLC, if it failed to amend its constitution to conform to the bill two years after being passed into law.

He said:  “A new version of the Collective Labour Relations Bill is not a product of consultation and largely different from the one we have made inputs to some years ago.

‘’Strangely, this new version was to be surreptitiously passed into law, but for our vigilance and the candor of the parliament to undertake due diligence.

“Evidence of our claim that the intentions of the amendment were to undermine trade unions and unnecessarily distort our industrial relations landscape and temperature can be seen in one of the portions of this new bill, which says if after two years of commencement of the application of this Act, and the Nigeria Labour Congress has not amended its constitution to conform to this Act, it shall stand proscribed.