Members of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) on Tuesday demonstrated nationwide as the economy bites harder.
Efforts to prevent them from hitting the streets of various Nigerian cities failed after a meeting between them and the federal government ended in a deadlock Monday night.
Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday, NLC President, Joe Ajaero, said the protest is about hunger and economic hardships in the country and not about the call for the review of the minimum wage as speculated in some quarters.
He claimed the government failed to meet the demands of the union since it removed fuel subsidy, a development that has led to the rise in the cost of living.
“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?” Mr Ajaero queried.
“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.
“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.
“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,” he added.
