We’ll wrestle Jonathan to the ground –NLC, TUC ... Reps are anti-people –Annkio Briggs

Sun News

18 December 2011

We’ll wrestle Jonathan to the ground –NLC, TUC


President Goodluck Jonathan may have called the bluff of the organized labour last Tuesday when he presented the 2012 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly and made good his government’s plan to remove the subsidy on fuel.
As far as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) are concerned, the action was an affront to the Nigerian people and an invitation for battle.

The NLC President, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, told Sunday Sun in an interview that the battle line has been drawn between the Federal Government and Nigerians.

“We made it clear to Mr President the position of Nigerian workers. We maintain our position and that is No! This reaction is not from labour alone but also from other Nigerians who all gave President Jonathan the mandate to become President of this great nation in April this year,” he said.

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...Reps are anti-people –Annkio Briggs

On whose side is the House of Representatives on the raging issue of fuel subsidy removal by the federal government? Frontline Niger Delta activist, Annkio Briggs, believes the opposition by the House to the move is at variance with what the Nigerian people actually want. For Briggs, who was among the select civil society members who met last weekend with President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja on the contentious issue, no right-thinking Nigerian would allow the subsidy remain one day longer because, according to her, the policy is fraught with fraud and reeking of corruption.

“If the Reps are saying that the subsidy should not be removed, on whose authority are they saying this? If they say we voted for them and they are representing us, we are saying that subsidy must go. This is not the position of only civil society but it is also that of all Nigerians,” she argues.