The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and its counterpart, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have declared the readiness of to mobilize members of the organized labour to vote for the Labour Party candidate, Mr Peter Obi in the 2023 Presidential election.
The presidents of the NLC and TUC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba and Quadri Olaleye, made the declaration during their respective remarks on Tuesday in Abuja at the lecture celebrating the tenth anniversary of the late Pascal Bayau, the third NLC president.
Wabba, who described Obi as one of the best Nigerians and the first Labour Party presidential candidate to be accepted by the labor Center, declared that the NLC was firmly behind Obi and would mobilize its members to guarantee the Labour Party’s triumph in the general elections in 2023.
He also said that labor unions had come to the realization that strikes and protests alone would not be sufficient to alter Nigeria’s narratives. As a result, they had decided to fully enter politics and work hard to support candidates whose platform would improve life for both their members and Nigerians in general.
The TUC boss, Olaleye, in his own remarks, described Obi as a fresh face leader that all labor unions are happy to support and prepared to work with as president. The labor movement, he stressed, “has embraced and adopted Obi as a candidate and will guarantee that workers turn out in large numbers to support him in the 2023 elections.”
He adds that the Labour Party was more powerful, one and formidable. “The NLC or TUC has a member in every family in Nigeria” , the TUC president said, demonstrating the party’s extensive organization.
According to him, the Labour Party, was the only party that represented Nigerian workers.
Peter Obi in his response, explained that his visit to the leaders of the two labour centers was only a courtesy trip to show respect for organized labour, on whose behalf and behalf of which he was seeking Nigerians’ votes in the general elections of 2023.
The former Anambra governor further disclosed that the commitment that drove him to enter the presidential race was “to move Nigeria from consumption to production and you can’t talk about production without labour.”
According to him, labour is the engine of production, capital and machines can do anything but labour is what makes it work.
“Because labour is the greatest contributor to production, it has to be properly remunerated”, he said.
He went further: “I don’t need to tell you how bad things are in this country today. if you are on wages, today Nigerians spend 100 percent of their wages on just feeding. So many don’t even know where their next meal will come from. They pay to train their children only for them to finish school and stay at home without work.
“These are issues we need to discuss. Nobody can be president without sitting down with the labour organisation to decide the future of Nigeria.
“This is a country of 200 million people sitting on 923,000 square kilometers of land. They can’t feed themselves, they can’t export anything.
“Total Nigeria’s export including oil is under $2 billion for 200 million people. A similar country, not a first world country, one with the same trajectory with Nigeria in the year 2000, Vietnam, sitting on 331,000 square kilometers of land, a third of Nigeria’s land space and 100 million population, with half of Nigeria’s population, their total earnings last year was $ 312 billion.”
According to the LP presidential candidate, more than half of the country’s youths of productive age were unemployed.
“This is what the Labour Party is seeking to sit down to discuss for the future of our country, ” he adds.
