AJAERO AND OSIFO ENGAGE IN NEEDLESS VERBAL ATTACKS BUT OFFER WORKERS NO CONCRETE STEPS
NIGERIAN WORKERS SUFFER UNDER BRUTAL EXPLOITATION AND NEGLECT WHILE AJAERO AND OSIFO ENGAGE IN NEEDLESS VERBAL ATTACKS.
NIGERIAN WORKERS AND TRADE UNION ACTIVISTS SHOULD STRUGGLE FOR A DEMOCRATIC AND FIGHTING TRADE UNIONISM.
The Tuesday October 27, 2026 agreement between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Federal Government that awarded a N70,000 monthly ‘Transport Allowance’ to the federal public sector workers for 6 months has generated not just controversy between Joe Ajaero (President of NLC) and Festus Osifo (President of the Trade Union Congress) but also an exchange of needless verbal attacks.
Festus Osifo dismissed the agreement as insufficient, stating that what Nigerian workers need is a salary increment and not a temporary palliative. The Campaign for Democratic and Workers Rights (CDWR) agrees with Osifo on the need for a better wage on a permanent basis. However, it will take determined struggle from both the NLC and TUC and huge pressure on the government and private sector employers of labour to achieve it. In respect of this, Osifo-led TUC and Ajaero-led NLC have failed woefully. Therefore, it is hypocritical of Osifo to have condemned the agreement without demonstrating any effort or willingness to seriously fight for something better. Indeed, considering the present weakness of the NLC and TUC, CDWR welcomes any wage award and calls on both labour centres to simultaneously fight for a better, sustainable wage that will make a decent life possible for Nigerian workers.
However, while a better wage is important, the determining factor for a decent life is the purchasing power of workers’ earnings and the state of the overall economy. In a neo-colonial, backward economy with no plan of industrialization, absence of basic infrastructure and the implementation of capitalist policies that prioritize the profit of a few at the expense of the working masses and poor, the value of wages will constantly be undermined and eroded. This is why it was disheartening that when the Tinubu government increased the price of petrol from N198 per litre to N1,350 per litre, an action that contributed so much to the devaluation of wages, an increase in cost of production and a rising cost of living, the Ajaero-led NLC and Osifo-led TUC did not put up any serious resistance or struggle against it. Rather, Joe Ajaero condescendingly and cynically asked Nigerians to fight for themselves while excusing the NLC. On his part, Osifo backed the full deregulation of the downstream sector, a policy that gave birth to the removal of the subsidy and the eventual astronomical increase in the prices of petroleum products.
Besides, the Tinubu-led government floated and devalued the Naira, a policy that increased the cost of goods immensely, given that the Nigerian economy is largely import-dependent. Again, the TUC and NLC did not resist it. The government also increased the electricity tariff for many communities in the name of the Band A tariff, wherein the tariff was increased by 226%, and the TUC and NLC kept quiet and did not resist. Neither did they condemn nor mobilize against the criminal increases in school fees at both tertiary and secondary schools amidst other attacks on the working people. The Joe Ajaero-led NLC sometimes blows hot but does not bite, while the Osifo-led TUC remains quiet. This was also what played out when the telecommunication tariff was increased by 50% in 2025.
There is a rapid growth and spread of casualization in workplaces across the country and various industries, something that has condemned many workers to modern-day, brutish slavery. After the Delegates’ Conference that elected Joe Ajaero as the NLC President on February 8, 2023, one of the first activities he undertook was holding a meeting with factory-based unions (NUFBTE, NUCFLANMPE, etc.). He pledged to fight casualization and unfair labour practices, but he has failed to lift a finger. The affiliate unions, NLC, and TUC have maintained a criminal silence while employers continue to casualize workers and have a field day. Casualization has become so entrenched that it is now the normal employment practice. At least 75% of Nigerian workers are casualized and continue to work in dangerous work environments. They are poorly paid and do not enjoy retirement benefits or medical insurance. As we write this statement, Comrade Abbey Trotsky, Oyo State Coordinator of CDWR, is a target of state persecution, currently facing two cases (criminal and civil) because he dared to show solidarity with casual workers at the Sumal company in Ibadan in 2018. Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo have refused to intervene or shown any iota of solidarity. It is a fact that a majority of labour leaders are too privileged, far disconnected from the realities and conditions of Nigerian workers, and fundamentally lacking an alternative socialist ideology that would enable them to defend workers.
Regarding politics, the NLC and TUC have failed woefully, considering how the Labour Party was formed and registered in 2003 and was turned into a second-eleven of the anti-worker political parties like the APC, PDP, and others. The Labour Party is supposed to be built as a mass democratic party of the working class and the poor to challenge all anti-poor policies and mobilize the masses to struggle for power. More than ever before, Nigerian workers and the poor need a political party of their own. The trade unions, activists, socialists, and pro-labour organizations must form a mass working people’s party that rests on a socialist programme as a vehicle to defeat the corrupt, anti-poor political parties.
Therefore, it is a gross irresponsibility for Ajaero and Osifo to engage in a public exchange of verbal attacks while failing to address the crises confronting Nigerian workers and the poor masses in their entirety. Hence, we call on the leadership of the trade union movement to prioritize the interests of the working people. We also call on Nigerian workers and radical trade union activists to engage in a struggle to democratize the unions and reposition them into fighting organs that constantly defend the interests of workers. Also, workers and trade union activists should begin to organize and use the next delegates’ conferences of both the NLC and TUC to usher in labour leaders who truly have an agenda to reclaim the unions from the grip of right-wing, reactionary trade union leaders and build a democratically run, fighting trade unionism.
Chinedu Bosah
National Publicity Secretary
Email: [email protected]