ON Thursday, September 8, 2011, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Abdulwahid Omar and his counterpart, President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Peter Esele, were scheduled to lead other national labour leaders to join the Enugu State chapter to a grand rally at the Workers Square of the State Secretariat, Enugu.

The labour leaders felt that picketing the state was the only avenue left for the workers to force the Enugu State Government to agree to pay the N18,000 National Minimum Wage, which President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law in March this year. Enugu is one of the states that remain adamant in insisting that it does not have the resources to pay the new minimum wage.

However, the state government had agreed to add N10,000 to the salaries of workers on Grade Levels One to Six and N5,000 to those on Levels Seven and above. The labour unions rejected this offer, insisting that the new wage law must be obeyed to the letter. Following what appeared like a breakdown in the dialogue between the two sides, a three-day warning strike was declared. Mid-way into the exercise, some leaders of the state chapter of the NLC were allegedly “compromised.” The NLC and TUC’s national secretariat offered to intervene and assist with the negotiations with the state government but the latter rejected their gesture, insisting that they would only talk to labour leaders from Enugu State. That was when the decision was reached by the national leadership of labour to join their colleagues in the picketing of the Enugu State Government.

On the morning of the proposed rally, the Golden Value Hotel, venue where the labour leaders lodged was besieged by alleged thugs, who pelted them with stones and missiles. This created a rowdy atmosphere, prompting the intervention of the Police. Led by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. Isaac Akinmoyede, the Police officers entered the hotel and tried to persuade the labour leaders not to proceed with their mission. Following their insistence to join the rally, the leaders were detained for hours, even though the state government denied being responsible for their ordeal.

This denial notwithstanding, critics of the state government accused it of orchestrating the invasion of the thugs followed by the intervention of the Police, all in attempts to foil the planned protests. Enugu State has written its name in the black books as the first state since the end of military rule to subject national officers of the labour movement to acts of impunity which were rampant in the days of military rule. We join all well-meaning Nigerians to denounce this strategy of mobilising miscreants against law-abiding citizens engaged in legitimate pursuit of the implementation of the minimum wage law.

We recall that the Enugu State Government also adopted a similar hard-line stance when the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in the South-Eastern Zone went on strike last year. Enugu was the last state in the zone to reach agreement with the striking tertiary education workers for schools to resume because it chose to mire the process in a legal battle that yielded no positive result to any side.

In like manner, the use of thugs to harass the labour leaders and their temporary detention also precipitated the on-going indefinite strike in the state, which has crippled much of governmental activities.

We call on the Governor Sullivan Chime government to adopt more statesmanlike attitudes towards the conduct of labour relations. The use of uncivilised methods can never lead to any fruitful outcome. The two episodes recalled above prove our point.

We also call on labour leaders, both in Enugu and other parts of the country to realise that government finances are not limitless. The seemingly endless demands of labour unions are driving many state governments towards bankruptcy. A small section of society working for government is beginning to take almost every dime that comes into government coffers through salaries and allowances.

Let what has happened in Enugu be a lesson to other states, and may the strike be called off as soon as possible.