By Cross Udo, Abuja
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has lamented that most state governors abandon their states and live permanently in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, while the people they are supposed to govern face hardship.
The NLC president, Comrade Joe Ajaero, stated this in what appeared to be a town hall meeting with workers at the NLC Secretariat in Lokoja.
The NLC leadership is in Kogi State to deliver and commission 10 Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses provided to the state chapter of the Congress to ease transportation problems.
The town hall meeting was organised primarily for the workers to present their problems and demands to the NLC leadership so that the matters would be taken to the governor.
The NLC President, who noted that the leadership has gone to about five zones regretted that the governors were always absent and were said to have travelled to Abuja.
Stressing that workers were feeling the heat of the harsh economic realities with the high cost of living, Ajaero said that the government’s contemplation of increasing telecom tariffs was pushing workers too far.
He said the leadership would take to the governor the problems and demands of the workers, adding that out of the five zones visited, it was only in one that the governor was around.
Ajaero said, “However, there is a problem we are having with trends because most governors are now living permanently in Abuja. We have moved to about five zones; Kogi is about the fifth zone. We have met governors in only one state. Each time you go there, they are in Abuja, and this is affecting governance.
“And I think we should be able to manage the centre and the units so that the people will have the feeling of democracy, the dividend of democracy, so that people can talk to their leaders.
“So, if we capture all these things, the information you are going to give us will be conditional on whether the governor is around. If he’s around, we will convey your information to him; if he’s not, we pass it on to whomever he sends.”
He said that Kogi State is strategic to the Congress because it has union leaders as governor and deputy, adding that Governor Usman Ododo was one of his officials in Niger State, while he deputy was an official of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT).
Ajaero further said, “So we want to hold this as a town hall meeting to listen to you and learn what has been done and what has not been done properly so that we can take it to them.
“To us, it is like homecoming. We want to come and interact with them to find out whether they are doing those things we are criticising others for.”
*Frowns at proscription of unions in Kogi
On the proscription of labour unions in state-owned tertiary institutions by the former administration of Yahaya Bello, the NLC President, who expressed surprise that such a thing existed in the state, said the state government lacked the right to proscribe unions that are on an exclusive legislative list.
He said, “Let me say here, union practice falls under the Exclusive Legislative List in the Constitution. No governor has the power to ban them; you don’t ban what you don’t control. Unions are registered nationally by the Registrar of Trade Unions. They may choose to have state branches for administrative convenience, so what are you now banning?”
Earlier, the workers told the NLC President that over ten years, the Kogi State Polytechnics, Kogi State University, and the State Colleges of Education, Technology, and Nursing have been under proscription by the State Government.
Other demands workers wanted the intervention of the Ajaero-led NLC to address included the non-implementation of the annual salary increase, the non-provision of housing for workers, and the shortage of teachers in primary and junior secondary schools.
