Labour unions suspend strike

The joint National Executive Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress on Wednesday night suspended the nationwide indefinite strike, which they embarked upon on Tuesday.

The leadership of the body said the decision to suspend the action was reached at a meeting which deliberated on the outcome of an earlier interface with the Federal government, brokered by the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu.

Festus Osifo, President of the trade union Congress, confirmed the suspension of the action.

The labour leaders said they got commitment from the Nuhu Ribadu-led meeting that those arrested for the physical assault on NLC President, Joe Ajaero, will be prosecuted.

Arrest and prosecution of those who attacked the president of the NLC was a major demand of the labour leaders who declared a nationwide strike on Tuesday.

“The NEC of the NLC and the TUC have suspended the strike. We did this based on our trust for the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, who gave us his words,” he said.

Labour leaders had on Wednesday, met with the federal government over the ongoing strike, with a resolve to reschedule another meeting later in the night to take a decision whether or not to continue with the strike.

Read also:Nigerians face blackout as electricity workers join NLC strike

The meeting held at the office of Nuhu Ribadu, the National Security Adviser to the President, ended with labour leaders, led by Festus Osifo, President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), saying that they will meet later tonight to decide the next line of action.

Simon Lalong , Minister of Labour and Employment, who spoke to Journalists at the end of the meeting said the meeting discussed the incident that happened in Imo and took far reaching decisions.

Lalong who noted that the meeting came under security consideration, said that was why the meeting was taken to the office of the NSA

He noted that the meeting was attended by all the labour leaders.

Lalong said the labour agreed to take the outcome back to their members and consider the plea of government to call off the strike in the interest of the nation.

“As you can see, all the labour leaders are here with us and we had very useful discussion and very frank conversations.

“It is an ongoing discussion, but assured.
Osifo in his comments, government has given labour ” a lot of assurances” including ” the earlier statement by the NSA that some people have been apprehended and that they will coordinate the investigation.”

Read also: National Assembly partially under lock as strike enters second day

“We also told him our part of the story, but at the end of the day, he made several appeals and promises of what they are going to and the ones that they have done.

“We said we are going back to appraise the conversion and communicate accordingly.

On how long the strike will be, Osifo noted that the ” strike was caused by something. It is the problems we came to have conversations on with all the assurances, we need to take it back.”