A foiled opposition uprising

Tribune

19 January 2012

A foiled opposition uprising

Regional Editor ,Olawale Rasheed X-rays the failed political goals of the just concluded protests, affirming that labour should be wary when picking allies in its fights against the government.

The nation just witnessed a two pronged uprising, one genuinely a product of citizens’ grievances and the other an opposition plot designed to gain through mass revolts what was lost through the ballot box. At the end, citizens‘ anger was responded to while opposition‘s agenda for regime change was foiled.

The citizen‘s legitimate anger over policy decision was rightly championed by labour which also employed a statutory weapon of down tooling to enforce change of policy. The tactics approved by labour leaders would also ordinarily have manifested smoothly without hicupps. Lack of detailed work plan on how the mass protest would operate and who would lead such protests left a big loophole for characters with political agenda to wade into the situation.

While reports showed that labour leaders had patriotic intention in their conduct throughout the mayhem, the gap they left wide open created avenues for various politically injured groups to coalesce and transform a labour dispute into an uprising targeting regime change. Worst still, the nature and character of the civil society groups labour was collaborating with was not so clear to the workers union and even the government of the day.