How NLC Leaders Escaped Arrest Ahead Of Two-Day Strike – Official

A senior official of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has opened up on why its delegation boycotted the Monday meeting with the minister of labour, Mr Simon Lalong scheduled to halt the two day strike in order to avoid arrest.

The official in an interview explained that the NLC delegation got signs of a possible arrest after the briefing given by Lalong on the planned strike that took place before the scheduled meeting.

The official who spoke to Vanguard, however, said that the arrest of the NLC delegation could not have even stopped the strike action.

The visibly angry NLC leaders told Vanguard that they boycotted the meeting over the strike in the Federal Secretariat Complex, Abuja to avoid arrest.

As one of the officials said:

His words: “We were scheduled to meet the Minister of Labour and Employment later today (yesterday), precisely by 3 pm but a few hours to the meeting, the minister called a media briefing where he castigated us and threatened us among other uncomplimentary words.

“Not that the meeting would have stopped the strike, but we intended to attend the meeting in the spirit of social dialogue. But as you are aware, the Minister of Labour, before the scheduled meeting, held a media briefing castigating and threatening us.

“You do not expect us to attend a meeting when we had been warned of a possible arrest.

“In fact, we thank the minister for putting us on notice of their plan. So, the right thing to do is to keep away from such meetings and avoid any possible arrest.

“What the minister had done was nothing short of industrial dictatorship and naked blackmail. The Federal Government had already taken decision on the proposed meeting, the minister was kind enough to hold a briefing ahead of the meeting to disclose part of the government’s decision.

‘’Well, like I said earlier, the strike goes ahead as planned. After Wednesday, we will determine what next steps to follow. The NEC’s communiqué was loud enough. We cannot continue as if we are living in a different country from our political leaders and their cronies.

‘’You cannot continue to beat us and say we should not cry. Everywhere you go in every part of the country; people are complaining of hardship and suffering without concrete efforts by government to lessen our pains. Instead, the government is unleashing more policies to send us to untimely death,” the NLC official said of the strike that he said was scheduled to go ahead irrespective of the threat of arrest.

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