Comrade Joe Ajaero is the factional president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). In the interview with Michael Oche, he spoke on the crisis that has engulfed the labour movement and the way forward
Nigeria’s labour movement has been in crisis since the last delegates’ conference of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) in March where a new leadership emerged. What is the genesis of the problem?
When the election came up, there were issues. We had what was called the unity forum which involved 42 industrial unions affiliated with congress. At that unity forum some decisions were taken and offices were harmonised; nine positions were zoned to public sector unions and seven to the private sector unions including that of president. The public sector was also allocated two more offices; that of the chairperson of the gender commission and the deputy. If you add it up, it will be 11 for public sector as against seven for private sector. And we agreed. Comrade Ayuba was present at the meeting and the unity forum executive was made up of about five persons, including his (Ayuba’s) general secretary that drew the proposal. The private sector tried to limit themselves to the seven offices. Igwe Achese (NUPENG president) and I tried to harmonise whether we should have one candidate for the president but we could not because he wanted to run and I wanted to run as well. At the eve of the closure of submission of nomination, we discovered that Comrade Ayuba Wabba from public sector had in addition to the nine offices allocated to the public sector, picked form for president, a position that had been zoned to the private sector. That was how the issue started.
What happened after then?
From the history of NLC, it had been deputy presidents taken over from outgoing presidents. We have also tried to balance between north and south as well as public and private unions. Those are unwritten conventions with which we try to balance the congress. This time around when it became the turn of the private sector to produce the president, Ayuba violated the arrangement. All efforts to harmonise it proved abortive. Never in the history of the movement has anybody who is none of the deputies become president in the order of succession. But Ayuba came up and filled his nomination form and the politicking started. There were also violations of the process leading to the election because the manipulation started even before the election. The first one was the appointment of the general secretary. A general secretary is the principal actor in the election of NLC; he is like the engine room. At that time Chris Uyot was acting general secretary; they advertised. Issa Aremu applied. However, for you to apply, you must have been a general secretary of an industrial union for at least five years. You must have been either a deputy general secretary or senior assistant general secretary of congress for that number of years for you to be eligible to qualify for interview. Peter Ozo-Eson who they are calling general secretary now was never a general secretary of any industrial union for one day; he was never a staff of congress but they brought his name because they didn’t want Chris Uyot who was acting to be confirmed and they didn’t want Issa Aremu.
How did Ozo-Eson emerge?
Nobody knew how they prequalified Ozo-Eson to be general secretary. The rumour we heard was that since Issa Aremu was Adams Oshiomhole’s candidate coming from textile union, there was need to bring another person who Adams brought to NLC, so they brought Ozo-Eson. The establishment committee met and I don’t think Ozo-Eson applied for the job because with his level of education being a PhD holder, he would have seen that he didn’t qualify for the position. But the area the establishment committee looked at was the point of age; the committee said the NLC staff condition of service is clear that NLC staff retire at the age of 65. But as at today, Ozo-Eson is 66 years, so the committee said it will like to seek for further advice. The issue came up at National Administrative Council (NAC) meeting and some of us said you can’t just bungle in a general secretary at the eve of election, the motive is suspect.
They took it to National Executive Council (NEC) and made a recommendation to NEC that Ozo-Eson is 66 years old and NLC staff retires at 65 recommending that he should be engaged for a four years single tenure even though NLC general secretaries don’t run tenures. If you engage somebody on ad-hoc for four years for an organisation that retires it staff at 65 and you engage him at 66, did you engage him as a staff? NLC general secretary must be a full time staff of congress. That was how the first illegality was carried out and that was the illegality that nullified every other thing. The man started acting illegally because you can’t act on nothing.
One of the arguments against you is that despite the flaws you mentioned with regards to the process leading to the election, you still went ahead to contest in both the botched and the rescheduled elections?
The truth is that under any circumstance, I was sure I was going to win the election. So it was not a question of looking for short cuts. I am not that kind of person. I followed the process and if I had lost that election, when I say lost, I mean lost in a free and fair manner, I would have left and prepared for the next election in four years. Unknown to many people, I contested for vice president in 2007 and lost and nobody heard anything. It is not do or die. We had the issue of counting going on for two days. In modern elections, the counting has to be open in such a way that before you finish sorting everybody would have known who the winner or loser was and there was public address system in the Eagle Square; just count ‘Ajaero, Ayuba, Ajaero, Ayuba’ by the time you finish sorting, everybody would have known but Omar started fighting my agent because my agent insisted on immediate counting after sorting. That was the main crisis; we said you must count it, they said no and that was what led to his attack and the lights-off that took place at the venue. Up till that time there were no issues; it was not until the lights went off and my agent was attacked that we had issues because I was still following. I had faith because I knew that Nigerian workers were not guided by where the candidates came from. I knew where my popularity reached and I followed it up. That was why I kept quiet.
What do you think is the solution to this crisis?
Well, I want peace in Nigeria, I want peace in the labour movement and I am an apostle of peace, but not peace of the grave yard; not peace at all cost. Things must be done properly, like I said any time I am called, I will appear to give my own account of what transpired up to this moment, so depending on the political will of the people trying to drive the peace process they may find the solution. If not, instead of us to work together and suffocate, we will continue to working apart or side by side so that we will survive. There is no law that says we cannot operate outside NLC, but we are NLC and we remain NLC and nobody through any thinking will tell us that we are not NLC or we don’t have the right to organise ourselves or organise a conference of our own if the other conference is not properly conducted. These are the issues, but we want a united labour centre.
