Lucky Obukohwo, Reporting
Chairman, Caretaker Committee, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Edo State chapter, Prof. Monday Igbafen, has urged the state government to depoliticize the union in the state and allows it operate without interference for the wellbeing of workers.
He made the appeal in Benin while speaking to a press statement titled “the protest against insecurity in the Land is just! Allow the NLC stand to defend the interest of workers and the Nigerian people in Edo State.
Prof. Igbafen said there would not have been division in the NLC if the state government is not backing them up.
“We actually don’t have division we have NLC versus the state so is the state and of course it didn’t start with this present government for some of us who are here you You have the history more than some of us who just came in.
“You see and that’s why if you check the text of the press conference it stated clearly there. And government should hands off. The people you are seeing that are grandstanding they are not the problem of NLC please. The state is the problem. Because is a state that empowers those people to come and seal the secretariat of NLC.
“And some of the things they are doing they actually don’t have capacity if you remove the state. So, let’s get it clearly”, Igbafen said.
He urged the state government to collaborate with the credible NLC leaders in the state to depoliticize the state NLC.
Speaking on the essence of the protest, Igbafen said everyone should be concerned about the state of insecurity in the country as Nigerians
“Today’s protest declared by the NLC across the country, as you are aware, is fo condemn, in strong terms, the obviously humongous problem of insecurity of varied
dimensions in our dear country, There is little or no need to espouse arguments to buttress why everyone of us should and must be concerned about the state of security in our land as our mothers, fathers, children, students, teachers, lecturers, brothers, sisters, relatives, close friends, and,
others have been victims of kidnapping, terrorism, and other ravaging forms of insecurity.
“Needless to add that the low, the high, the mighty, and the prominent amongst us, as well as local and international stakeholders in the Nigerian State, have expressed and continue to vent grave concern
and anxiety over the steady degeneration of our country into a Hobbesian State of nature where the lives and property of every citizen is brutish and unsecured.
“The NLC, at its 4th December, 2025 National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Lagos, resolved fo lend its voice to the growing local and international outcry against the embarrassing security situation in our dear country and consequently declared today, the 17th of December 2025, as a day of national protest by the teeming Nigerian workers whose lives have remained on the edge not only by the debilitating wave of insecurity but also the suffocating consequences of neo-liberal policies of the Nigerian State”, Igbafen said.
While blaming those who backed out of the scheduled protest, he said no progressives union movement will stand with arms akimbo and watch the degeneration of existential life such as the case in the country today, adding that the Edo State chapter of the NLC stand in firm support of today’s protest.