The Nigerian Merchant Navy Officers and Water Transport Senior Staff Association has expressed the hope that the crisis currently rocking the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) leading to the fractionalization of the apex labour body would soon be resolved.
Recall that the NLC on the 12th of March, 2015 held its rescheduled congress to elect its National Officers where Comrade Ayuba Wabba of the Medical and Health Workers’ Union emerged the National President which was rejected outrightly by 23 member Unions who later held another Congress in Lagos where Comrade Joe Ajero of the Nigeria Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) emerged a factional President of NLC.
Speaking in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos, the Secretary-General of the association, Comrade Julius Efiokpor said that creating a parallel union or intra union dispute was a problem as the government would no longer see the union as one body adding that if any of the faction should go to the government now, it would be told to go and put its house in order as recognizing a faction against the other would pose a problem.
“They will advise them to go and put their house in other and doing that means that the junior workers have no representative. Opportunities will come that the stakeholders will start victimizing and oppressing the workers because they have no central body”.
“But I believe that we are strong enough to withstand any push from the oppressors. So, we hope that in the very near future, the issue of dispute within the union will be resolved. Like what the NLC President, Comrade Wabba said, they are putting machineries in motion to see how they resolve the dispute”, Efiokpor stated.
