Delegations of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Friday evening stormed out of a scheduled meeting with a Federal Government team at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja following the inability to reach an agreement over the recent removal of petrol subsidy.
Yesterday marked the fourth meeting between the unions and the federal government as presidential steering committee on subsidy removal palliatives, to try and resolve the grievances of labour unions concerning the hike in petrol and other prices following subsidy removal.
President of NLC, Joe Ajaero, and General Secretary of TUC, Nuhu Toro, led the labour teams, while Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Olu Veighjein, was representing the Federal Government at the time of the incident.
It was learnt that the labour delegation had challenges gaining entry to the State House, Abuja where the meeting was scheduled to hold, and which had hosted three previous meetings over the negotiations.
The labour leaders had complained that they were kept waiting for a long while at the State House main entrance gate as their names were reportedly not on the visitors’ list for security clearance.
They later made it to the usual venue, the conference room of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, who was however, not present, but was said to have earlier been around waiting for the Labour union leaders to arrive, while the misunderstanding at the entrance gate lasted.
Nonetheless, the meeting went behind closed doors but surprisingly ended a few minutes afterwards when angry labour union officials came out of the venue and declined to speak officially to journalists as they had done on previous occasions.
However, one of them who declined to be named, was heard lamenting that “they (FG) are using cover to deceive Nigerians. They are supposed to be three subcommittees – the Mass Transit subcommittee, the CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), and the Cash Transfer – to brief us, the steering committee but the government was not prepared for the meeting.
“In their introductory remarks they made excuses and they wanted the meeting to continue but the meeting did not form a quorum.
“If there is no quorum, we are a people that operate on the basis of process. So, if there’s no quorum in a meeting what do you do? You will adjourn for lack of a quorum.
“There was nobody to meet with. The Chief of Staff was not there. They are taking us like small children.”
No official statement had been issued by the presidency at the time of this report.
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