By Victor Ahiuma-Young

If everything goes well, Abdulwaheed Omar, will hand over to a new president of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC that will either take Congress to the next level or quicken its move into oblivion from the Olympian heights that Comrade Adams Oshiomhole left it in 2007.

Though Omar’s emergence as President of Congress in 2007 was regarded as a child of necessity after the person “being groomed” to take over from Comrade Oshiomhole was not presented for election by his union, it is however debatable whether Comrade Fidelix Edeh, who was voted against to elect Omar because of his perceived closeness to the late Abacha government would not have performed better today.

There is no doubt that every well-meaning union, labour leader and delegate to today’s NLC election knows that the NLC of today is not the same NLC Comrade Oshiomhole left in 2007.

Neither industrial unions nor state councils of NLC can stand up to say Congress leadership in the past eight years has bettered their lots and made them proud.

For example, state councils of Congress have not been funded since 2007 and money centrally paid as dues to NLC national secretariat, the state councils have not been paid their rebates in the past eight years and most of them have become appendages of the state governments.

Funding of state councils

Unfortunately, the Financial Committee comprising Congress President, Treasurer, General Secretary, and Financial Secretary among others, whose primary duty is to see to the funding of the state councils, deliberately refused to pay rebates to the state councils.

In fact, the committee deliberately refused to work out a rebate system to pay state councils their dues. This situation has made state councils to be at loggerheads with the NLC leadership. This of course, has paralysed the state councils to the extent that they cannot pay their bills, forcing them to be at the mercy of state governors.

Investigations have revealed that the principal actors ahead of Congress’s election have sidelined the state chairmen and secretaries of NLC who are members of National Executive Council, NEC, and are dealing with the Presidents and Secretaries of the industrial unions to get the NLC position.

One hopes the Presidents and General Secretaries have their thinking caps on because some of these actors, the positions they presently occupy in Congress have only been used for personal aggrandizement. Their trade mark is “use and dump”.

For years, some of these actors have been leaders of anti-casualisation campaign by Congress.  Since 2007 till date, one cannot remember a single picketing or threat of picketing by the committee, both in the public and private sector.

As at today, the level of casualisation and outsourcing of workers in both private and public sectors is better imagined than told. The situation today is that permanent workers are being sacked only to be reengaged as casual workers.

It is a common knowledge that the Kriston-Lally Housing fraud has brought shame and disrepute to Congress; these individuals also are leaders of the Kriston-Lally committee and sanctioned every deal concerning the controversial scheme. But today, they are going about denying their roles in the fraud which has led to the death of some contributors. They are even claiming they were not part of the several trips out of the country on the tickets of Kriston-Lally Housing committee. These people have no shame. They can simply not be trusted. The best way to describe them is that they are labour contractors.

Even in their unions, they have become demi-gods where their words and actions must be obeyed without question. They have equally squandered their unions’ resources just to maintain their self delusions.

There must be secret ballot

Like the saying goes, the guilty are always afraid. Because these people are even afraid of their shadows, and have no regard for the constitution, they have been pushing and canvassing for block voting pattern.  Instead of the secret ballot that the constitution of NLC recognizes, they are asking delegates to show one another who they voted for because of the fear that delegates who are not zombies would vote according to their conscience.

Delegates should be allowed to vote for the candidates of their choice, those they believe will not trample on NLC’s constitution, those who will fight casualisation of workers, those who will not, after deceiving workers to key into a fraudulent housing scheme, turn round to deny their roles.

At this critical period, the leaders that Nigerian workers need are those who can look at the face of government or business owners and tell them that workers deserve their just and fair dues.

There was once an NLC that was the pride of Nigerian workers, that government and employers respected, that every Nigerian identified with and was respected internationally.

International respect

Delegates have the opportunity to be part of history and vote for leaders that will restore NLC lost glory, that every Nigerian worker will want to identify with, that will fight for the oppressed, the neglected, the forsaken, the abused and the denied.

Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are, so they say.  This is a period that NLC does not need as leaders those who trample on union’s constitution,  leaders who are sit tight, leaders after serving eight years as presidents, transmute as General Secretary,  leaders who are tribal, ethnic and sectional champions  instead of national champions.

The choice is for 3019 delegates to make.  When you vote, remember that the decision you make today could either mar or make the Congress and ultimately, mortgage the future of  this generation and generation yet unborn.