Workers will stage a strike all over the country on Thursday next week in order to protest President Umaru Musa Yar�adua�s inability to investigate cases of corruption against former President Olusegun Obasanjo and other principal officers that served during his eight year tenure.
Speaking at the May Day rally in Abuja yesterday, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress [NLC] Comrade Abdulwahed Ibrahim Omar said the protest will be organised “to ensure that all those who looted the country�s funds, whether in the power sector, oil sector or any sector of the economy are prosecuted.”
He said, “We are convinced that Nigeria will not advance among the comity of nations if corruption continues to take away the resources necessary for development. Therefore, it is in the interest of Nigerians to mobilise to confront corruption. We must mobilise to let President Umaru Musa Yar�Adua appreciate that he must wage the war against corruption with all the political will and decisiveness that the war requires.”
Comrade Omar said the NLC is organising the mass protest to put pressure on the federal government to carry out a full investigation into the activities of the previous administration from 1999 to 2007. Nigerians will not accept half-measures on the probe, he said.
According to the NLC leader, Nigeria was massively plundered by former President Obasanjo and his cronies. President Yar�adua must take proactive steps to ensure that all the stolen funds are recovered and the culprits are brought to book, Omar said
“We want to specially commend the President for reversing some of the fraudulent privatisation and concessioning done by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. It was absolutely obvious that Nigeria was ripped off through the privatisation of refineries and the steel companies, the concessioning of the National Theatre and other monuments and the concessioning of the Abuja International Airport.
However, these measures are not enough. Nigeria must recover all her assets illegally transferred into private hands. We demand again for the revocation of the privatisation of NITEL and Nigeria Insurance Corporation; we demand a stop to the concessioning of the air and sea ports; we demand that the criminal grabbing of government land and government houses under Mallam Nasir el-Rufai should be urgently revisited.”
He added, “Labour had been opposed to these and other transactions not just because due process had been breached. Our position is that no government has any right to sell or transfer our common inheritance to private interests.
We are opposed to the privatisation or concessioning of strategic infrastructures, social services and cultural and sporting facilities. The challenge is to develop an appropriate framework to make them work. If need be, private capital or co-investors can be mobilised to run these assets but ownership as of right must be vested in the Nigerian people.”
“We support moves by the Federal Government to rescue the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) from the grip of Transcorp. The evidence that has emerged in many cases is that NITEL and some of these enterprises have been virtually destroyed after their privatization. For instance, NITEL now has 40,000 lines. Before privatization, it had 300,000 lines. Nigeria Insurance Corporation (NICON) has been going from one crisis to the other since its take- over by a private core investor. Many companies have been closed down by their owners or so-called core investors after privatization,” he also said.
Comrade Omar warned the federal government against any increase in electricity tariffs, saying that increasing tariffs will mean double jeopardy and labour will certainly not accept this. “Labour will resist any attempt to increase electricity tariffs at this time. With the epileptic supply of electricity, Nigerians spend too much on alternative sources. We believe that stability of power supply needs to be attained and guarantied before an upward review of electricity tariff is contemplated,” he said.