The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has claimed that its president Comrade Joe Ajaero, is the reason why Nigerians are not buying petrol at N1,500 per litre.
The NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Comrade Benson Upah, revealed this in an interview with Vanguard.
Upah noted that it is the strong character of the Congress President, Comrade Ajaero, that made the government careful in increasing the pump price of petrol.
He also said the Ajaero leadership is responsible for the wage award of N35,000 from the government, adding that the NLC is committed to ensuring that the next national minimum wage will be an amount that would take workers home.
Comrade Upah said the NLC President is making sure negotiations are concluded on time for workers to have something that will take care of the inflation and hardship in the country.
“So the most important thing is that he is insisting that the minimum wage conversation be consummated within the appropriate timeframe,” he said.
Asked what benefits workers had derived from the Ajaero- led leadership in about one year he became the NLC President, Upah said: “First and foremost, wage award is the immediate but there are others.
“We signed two MoU’s (Memoranda of Understanding) with this administration (of President Bola Tinubu). The first was on the 5th of June 2023. The second was on the second or third of October 2023. Look at the contents of those MoUs. The wage award, the decision of the government to restore or to accept to pay the withheld salaries of the four university-based unions, NASU, NAAT, SSANU and ASUU, was part of it
“I also want to tell you: but for the resolute stand of NLC under Ajaero, Nigeria should have been paying a much higher tariff for petrol, by now, it wouldn’t have been N700 or N800. I tell you we would have been paying N1,500.
“But the government is being careful about crossing the threshold. It knows that if it does NLC will mobilize to the streets, NLC will mobilize the citizenry against it. So because of this, we are stuck where we are at six hundred and something naira and N700.”
