The organized labor has questioned the genuineness of President Bola Tinubu’s contributions made during his national broadcast to Nigerians to mitigate the effects of his administration’s policies on the populace.
The labour vowed to proceed with its planned protest over the removal of petroleum subsidy, saying what he told Nigerians was neither here nor there considering that after spending two months in office, there was no concrete measures to bring immediate succour to the people.
Speaking to correspondents, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, said the plan for workers to proceed on a peaceful protest from Wednesday has not changed.
He dismissed fears that the peaceful protest could be hijacked by hoodlums, saying that such had never happened in the history of workers protest.
However, he said it is the responsibility of security agencies to provide security for the protest to protect the workers.
He said the meeting of the Steering Committee adjourned till 12noon on Tuesday to enable the labour leaders to listen to the president’s national broadcast on Monday.
However, reacting to Tinubu’s plan to intervene on exhange rate over inflation and high cost of gasoline prices, Ajaero said: “By the time you have a single market and you are not having anything that has a comparative advantage, your energy is import driven, then how are you going to control it? How are you going to control somebody that exchanged dollar at about 900 (naira)? Are you going to tell him to sell below the price?
“How are you going to tell even NEPA today, with the cost of production not to increase tariff? Even corn in the villages that was sold at N18,000 by February, now it’s about 56,000. How are you going to control it?”