The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has stated it would have joined the #EndBadGovernance protest held in August.
NLC said it regrets not joining the protest following the recent arrest of its President, Joe Ajaero.
This is according to the Head of Information of the NLC, Benson Upah.
Upah slammed President Bola Tinubu-led federal government for not wanting to hear opposition’s voice.
Upah noted that the practice of using the Department of State Services (DSS) and Police to arrest voices challenging the government policies shows dictatorship is creeping into Nigeria under President Tinubu’s regime.
Speaking in an interview with Arise TV, on Tuesday, the NLC spokesman stated that the federal government wants to use the continued arrest of its leaders to distract the organized labour.
“It is a diversionary tactic to sway us away from the path of focus and concentration. You know, the government has just introduced another band of PMS pricing, and does not want us to focus on that. So, it has to look for something else to divert our attention, so, it is part of this process that this has happened, and we consider it illegal, unlawful.
“This is how dictatorship starts, it creeps in. People look the other way believing that it will not come to them.
“Quite amazingly, this is being practiced by those who held themselves out yesterday as promoters of democracy. They should be ashamed of themselves. These are the very guys who went into exile doing this to innocent citizens believing that we will be cowed, but we will never be cowed. The Nigerian spirit is in us, it is a robust spirit, nobody is going to defeat this spirit in us. We are Nigerians, and we will continue to do the right thing,” he said.
The NLC leader maintained that Ajaero was not given any invitation, nor was he avoiding the security agencies. He explained that even as of Tuesday, the DSS has not given any explanation for arresting and detaining Ajaero.
“For us, as far as we are concerned, no invitation was extended to us before this arrest, and up till now, no reasonable explanation has been given. We can only speculate. As I have said earlier on, the government has some policies that it wants to unravel and does not want any opposition voice to be heard.
“Government has been battering us and wants to be cheered, wants us to cheer it into our own graves. But we keep insisting, we’re not going to be cheerleaders, we will keep on protesting, even to the last drop of blood in us
“We can only speculate the motives of the government. Even if there was an interrogation that this was linked to the end hunger protests, I mean, we keep on seeing it as a façade, because I tell you, on July 22nd, we issued a statement stating clearly that we are not part of the protest. In the 23rd, we issued another unambiguous statement. On the 1st of August, we issued a clearer one, and everything points to the fact that we were not part of this protest,” Upah added.
He explained that the allegations of terrorism, treasonable felony and cybercrime were all framed up. He claimed the government knew who the criminals were but would not go after them.
“Looking back now, perhaps we should have joined this protest, because had we joined this protest, they would not even have had audacity to raid our headquarters in the first place had we joined this protest, because they know our capability, they know our capacity, and they know they will never underrate our will.
“We’ve got nothing to do with all of this, we’ve got nothing to do with subversion, we’ve got nothing to do with treasonable felony, we’ve got nothing to do with cybercrime, terrorism financing and all that, and these guys know it, they know those who are involved. They know them, but they are scared of going after them,” Upah stated.
