The organised labour and the federal government have set up a Presidential Steering Committee to serve as a clearing house and coordinate the technical sub-committees on different items agreed upon in efforts to thwart industrial action by workers in the country.
The committee will see to the resolution of all contentious issues and implement the decisions reached within the next eight weeks.
The organised labour had threatened to strike, to protest the removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu, alleging that the government did not put in place the measures to cushion the effect of the subsidy.
To avert the strike, the federal government quickly convened a meeting with labour where demands that will serve as palliatives were made and the two parties agreed to meet again on Monday, June 19.
At the meeting on Monday at the State House, Abuja, the federal government and the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, agreed that all the issues and demands raised should be concluded within eight weeks.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the meeting, the President of the TUC, Festus Osifo flanked by his NLC counterpart, Joe Ajaero said that the parties will reconvene on Monday next week to review the framework marshalled out.
He said: “We have concluded our meeting, if you remember very well the last time that we were here that labour, TUC, NLC met with the government about two weeks ago, we agreed that we are going to reconvene today, that is the 19th of June, we just reconvened, we had a meeting although brief.
“The purpose of the meeting today is actually to put together the framework, what we submitted as our demand, how will they be delivered and so we are looking at those frameworks, the government came with what they think will work, we also made some input. From this night, we are going to continue the work in order to have that framework together.
“We agreed that anything we are putting together we are going to conclude everything in eight weeks. Everything must be rolled out within that time and not something that we are going to leave endlessly. They have submitted the framework to us, we have looked at it, and we have made input to it, this night we will continuously work on it in order for us to come up with the deliverables.
“If you look at the communique that was signed in our last meeting, there are some action items in the communique. So it’s actually how these action items will be delivered. For example, we need to have a Presidential Steering Committee that will have to oversee everything. We also need to have Technical sub-committees because if we talk about the issue of CNG, we need experts, the issue of CNG you need those people that are willing to invest, the issue of CNG, you need the national oil company, the NNPCL to come up with what they need to do and the time with which they are going to deliver.
“There are some technicalities that are required beyond this meeting, so those technical committees will be subsumed into Presidential committees but we must conclude everything maximum in eight weeks. So those technical committees, some will submit their reports in one week, when they submit in one week, we will implement, when they submit in two weeks we will implement but the last should not exceed eight weeks.
“The terms of reference of these committees are going to be agreed on between today and tomorrow. We are looking at five broad technical committees that will be subsumed into the Presidential Steering Committee. There must be timelines in these terms of reference, but the maximum should not exceed eight weeks. By Monday next week, we will be here again, same time.”
Also speaking, the Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties, Communication and Strategies, Dele Alake, said that the meeting considered short term, medium term and long-term measures in resolving the issue with the government.
He said: “We reconvened today, both parties went through this list and we tipped off the viable ones. Those things are broken into three categories. The immediate, are those that can be of low hanging fruit in the short term, the medium term and the long term.
“So those list of demands in terms of implementation and execution fall into those three broad categories of short, medium and long term categories. So that’s what we decided today and other meetings will still be held in order to cross the t’s and dot the i’s.
“One group has been constituted at today’s meeting, there is a steering committee that will be like a clearing house, there are other groups set up comprising both parties, government and labour members and these groups will work together very harmoniously and efficiently to arrive at the final resolution of all these demands and what we call interventions.”
Present at the meeting are the delegation of the NLC, led by its President, Joe Ajaero, the delegation of the TUC led by its President, Festus Osifo, the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, Special Adviser for Revenue, Zachaeus Adedeji and the Special Adviser for Energy, Olu Verheijen and the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Kachallom Daju.
Others are the Group Chief Executive Officer, GCEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited NNPCL, Mele Kyari, the Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, NUPRC, Gbenga Komolafe, the CEO of Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed among others.
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