Crisis is
presently rocking the number one labour centre in the country, the Nigeria Labour
Congress (NLC), following the disruption of its 11th Delegates’ Conference and
inconclusive election, early Thursday morning.
For the first time in the history
of the congress, its delegates’ conference was inconclusive and election
stalemated. As of the time of going to the press last night, leaders of the
congress were still making frantic efforts to resolve the crisis, following an
emergency National Administrative Council (NAC) meeting called by its General
Secretary, Peter Ozo-Eson.
After the initial early, but
normal hitches that rocked the conference due to disqualification of some
contestants who filled their forms wrongly was resolved, the election kicked
off smoothly late Wednesday night, but not after some candidates have stepped
down to support and boosted the chances of others.
President of the NUPENG, Igwe
Achese, who was one of the three candidates initially contesting for the NLC
presidency seat, publicly announced his withdrawal in support of Nigeria Union
of Electricity Employees (NUEE) General Scretary, Joe Ajaero and decided to go
for the post of a deputy president.
General Secretary of Texile
Workers and former vice president of NLC, Issa Aremu, also withdrew from
contesting for the post of vice president.
At that point, the race for the
NLC president was between Ajaero and the president of Medical and Health
Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWHUN), Ayuba Wabba.
The election commenced on a
peaceful note, but on Thursday morning, when the delegates from NUEE were
voting, they alleged a discovery that the names of some candidates appeared in
some of the ballot booklets in more than one and two places.
When this was discovered, the
process was disrupted, leading to scampering which forced everybody to leave
the venue.
However, Ajaero and Achese
alleged fraud in the election process, insisting that they would not accept it.
Meanwhile, after the alleged
irregularities in the ballot papers, which sparked uproar among the delegates
and resulting in the cancellation of the election, delegates loyal to Ajaero
hijacked the ballot boxes and other election materials, throwing the venue of
the conference into confusion.
Nigerian Tribune gathered that
the outgoing president, Abdulwahed Omar, insisted on continuing as the
president of NLC and conduct a fresh election that would be acceptable by all
before his term would expire in March, but the condition was immediately
rejected by Ajaero and Achese, who stated that Omar should vacate the seat and
allow the General Secretary to run the congress till an interim leadership was
put in place.
They claimed that Omar had messed
up the electoral process and that if the election had been concluded, he would
have since handed over to the next president and vacated the seat.
Both Ajaero and Achese left the
venue of the meeting, describing the meeting being led by Omar as illegal, and
that they would not be parties to it.
They insisted that there was no
more NAC in place after the stalemate, saying that they would not sit under the
leadership of Omar.
Speaking while he stormed out of
the meeting, Achese alleged that NLC leadership which failed to dissolve the
Omar-led executive deliberately orchestrated the failure of the delegates’
conference in a bid to extend the tenure of Omar.
Achese said: “I don’t know what
to call it— mistake, manipulation or well-articulated effort to rig the
election in favour of a particular candidate?
“Imagine a situation, where Ayuba
Wabba’s name appeared on a ballot booklet twice or thrice. It’s obvious that
NLC wanted Wabba to win the election against the choice of other delegates.”
He pointed out that the outgoing
executive violated existing constitution of NLC for not dissolving the
executive council led by the outgoing president, having the prior knowledge of
the irregularities that would be experienced during the poll.
Wabba, however, said the
disruption of the election was intentional, adding that this was done when they
realised that they cannot win the election after about 23 unions had voted.
He said the election was going on
smoothly, when suddenly the other group disrupted it; and he pointed out that
the event and activities in the last three days preceeding the election clearly
showed that the other group had plans to make the election inconclusive.
Asked if he had reached out to
the electoral committee, he said: “I shouldn’t be the one to do that; I have no
basis to do that, it is essentially their work. It is headed by a very
respected person, Dr Fagge, the president of ASUU. He is a very repected
person, who managed the process very well.
“The NAC is the second highest
organ after the delegates’ conference. Certainly, I think it will meet to
decide the next line of action, but it is really unfortunate; people ought to
be responsible, as there are processes. Instead of resorting to acts of
hooliganism, there should be civilised processes of addressing whatever
grievances there are.”
He called on his members to remain calm and await
further directive
Tags
Society