Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over the alleged refusal of the Kaduna State government to honour and respect the Memorandum of Understanding signed at a meeting brokered by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige.
Under the MoU reached between NLC and the Kaduna State government to end the face-off over sack of thousands of workers in the state Civil Service, a 10-man Committee headed by the Head of Service of Kaduna state was set up to negotiate peace.
According to the details of the MoU read out by Ngige shortly after the conciliatory meeting help at the Ministry in Abuja two weeks ago, the Committee was expected to kickstart it’s work by submitting a workplan to the Ministry of Labour and Employment four days after the agreement was signed.
However, NLC that to its greatest surprise, after signing the MoU with workers, “the Kaduna State Government has gone ahead to impugn all the clauses in the agreement freely entered with the Nigeria Labour Congress”.
In the petition addressed to the president and signed by the NLC’s president, Mr. Ayuba Wabba, NLC accused the Kaduna State governor of violating the terms of the agreement with the workers by victimizing its branch chairman in Kaduna state.
Some of the alleged violations commuted by the Kaduna State government include; “Refusal of the state government to honour/respect the Memorandum of Understanding signed at a meeting brokered by the Minister of Labour and Employment; continuous violation of workers’ rights as provided in our labour laws”.
NLC also accused the state governor of authorising punitive transfer of the state Chairperson of the NLC and sacking of workers for participating in the warning strike.
‘Violation of the “no victimization” clause in the signed agreement: . Nonadherence and respect for the rule of law,” said NLC.
In the letter, the NLC expressed its appreciation on the regard President has shown on the entire workforce in Nigeria and his for his intervention in the recent industrial dispute in Kaduna state occasioned by the decision of the Kaduna state Governor, Mr. Nasir El-Rufai, to arbitrarily sack thousands of workers in the state Public Service without recourse to the provisions of Nigerian laws.
