The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Joe Ajaero, has said the ongoing two-day nationwide protest organised by the union is to kick against massive hunger in the country.
He said, contrary to the assumptions in some quarters, the protest is not about a review of the minimum wage.
The NLC president, who stated this in Abuja, lambasted the federal government for failing to implement realistic policies that would cushion the effect of fuel subsidy removal.
“You have to understand it. This protest is about hunger. What of those who are not working? The minimum wage, when will it be completed?
“When will it be implemented? What will be the minimum wage that will remove hunger?”
“The UN said that every the poorest man should be fed on $2 per day. That’s the poorest. And if you have a family of six people, $2 per day by six is $12,” he said while addressing the press at the venue of the rally.
“In a month, you have $360, which translates to about N700,000. Is that the minimum wage you’re talking about? Is that what will feed you? That’s feeding alone. I’m not talking about transportation and accommodation. So what are we saying? What about medical? What are we saying?
“Well, you know, we don’t, we don’t tell them what to do. We will tell them how we feel. There was hunger in the land, but it wasn’t this bad until deregulation.
“And then after the regulation, we proposed all that we needed to. If they had solved the problem of transportation immediately, they would have solved almost 50% of the problem.
“Because even when you process garri in the village, you need to transport it to town. The expenses you incurred on transportation, you add it to the cost of garri.
“So the moment they touch PMS, you can’t fill your tank with N30,000, N40,000. So the moment they touched it. We said, ‘OK, bring CNG buses. This is 7-8 months, no one bus is on the street,” the NLC chief said.
“So we have provided all those solutions, even the cash transfer. They are still telling us now that they will start the cash transfer and they were playing politics with it that they were diverting it to their accounts.
“After today, we review our situation and decide on other steps to be taken.”
