The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has given the Nigerian Government and its affiliated institutions seven working days to address the cash crunch, threatening to direct all workers to stay at home if their demands are not met. NLC President Joe Ajaero made this declaration on Monday at an emergency meeting of the Central Working Committee of the NLC in Abuja, the nation’s capital. Ajaero expressed the difficulties Nigerians have been facing with the CBN’s cashless policy and the current situation, saying it is almost impossible to access cash, especially for traders without bank accounts.
He also stated that the NLC has discovered that old currencies given out by banks cannot be spent and are not accepted by banks when taken back. The NLC president claimed that fuel stations in some parts of the country are selling petrol for as much as N350 a litre, and the NLC will no longer remain quiet about the issue of perennial fuel scarcity and arbitrary price increases.
Additionally, Ajaero lamented that some state Governors were interfering with the ongoing state council elections of the NLC. He alleged that a governor in one of the South East states openly campaigned for a particular candidate and that the NLC’s resistance was met with manhandling of its officers by hoodlums sent by the state government. He alleged that the state chairman of the NLC was reportedly driven out of the state, and the thugs took over the state secretariat for three months, resulting in its destruction.
