Nigeria: Why Labour Challenged FG On Purposeful Leadership, Seven-Point Agenda

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Daily Independent (Lagos)

9 October 2008
Posted to the web 9 October 2008

Sylvester Enoghase
Lagos

The frustrations of a majority of Nigerians over the lack of progress in virtually all aspects of Nigerian life, lack of good leadership programmes on the seven-point agenda relative to the outstanding accomplishments of other countries, with which the country started the journey towards nationhood, may well reflect the disgust and anger of the organised Labour in the 48th Independence of Nigeria.

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)having looked into the abyss the Nigeria leadership has helped create that have deepened a crisis which threatens the jobs, homes and futures of millions of Nigerians that never drew profit from the years of excess crude oil fund, whose work has been underpaid and degraded and who bear no responsibility for what is now happening called for transformative leadership to take more decisive charge of governance based on the Seven-Point Agenda

The NLC's President, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar who argued that to explain the Nigerian backwardness, we must again engage the vexing issue of poor leadership said "Those other nations have accomplished remarkable feats in governance based on sound ethics, first class technological and industrial development, excellent infrastructures and high standards of living".

He added "While we believe that President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, has demonstrated in the past the required intellectual depth and grasp of development issues to provide transformative leadership, he has to take more decisive charge of governance based on the Seven-Point Agenda. It worries our movement that the federal executive branch has floundered from an initial dynamism to a lack-lustre performance".

According to Omar, given its deep crisis, Nigeria needs positive and result-oriented action and policies, particularly on infrastructures, industry and employment creation as the excuse of fine-tuning the Seven Point Agenda two years into the tenure of this government is no longer tenable.

"We believe that notwithstanding the circumstances of emergence of this government, the reality of de facto existence requires that it must sit up in relation to the fundamental challenges of national development", he said.

Omar, however noted that the Federal Government has to assure Nigerians that the country is not on autopilot and that to aspire to be among the 20 largest economies by the Year 2020 requires a leadership that is expeditious, dynamic and competent.

In the same vein, the President General of Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC)Comrade Peter Esele, while calling on the nation's leaders to be cautious of its economic policies, warned that the high rate of unemployment, closure of shops by manufacturing industries have deepened the crisis which threatens the jobs, homes and futures of millions of Nigerians.

He said" It is only by breaking the habit of hanging on the coat tails of financial interests, abandoning their complicity in the generation of massive and growing inequality, and ending their underwriting of corporate greed and excess, can governments reconnect with the realities of the lives of working families, and begin to provide the leadership and the answers they demanded".

Esele noted that this awakening comes late, but if it goes deeper than a passing concern to extinguish the fires raging in the industrial sector, which is threatening to engulf the real economy, then it is to be welcomed.

The TUC's boss said "The signal which Nigerians needs now to save the nation's economy from collapse must be such that the President must be less of a politician and more of a purposeful chief executive to place the nation's economy on emergency to revive its lost virtues"

"The Federal Government should take a serious look at the revitalisation of dormant industries, like the textiles, footwear, leather which will go along way to addressing the joblessness of our youths", he added

The labour leader however called on the Federal Government to assure Nigerians of leadership that will fulfil its political mandate to create job opportunities and ensure that the needed infrastructural development of the economy is given serious concern.

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