Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari over the alleged refusal of the Kaduna State government to honour and respect the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed at a meeting brokered by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige.
The MoU reached between NLC and the Kaduna State government to end the face-off over sack of thousands of workers in the state Civil Service, a 10-man Committee headed by the Head of Service of Kaduna state was set up to negotiate peace.
According to the details of the MoU read out by Ngige shortly after the conciliatory meeting help at the Ministry in Abuja two weeks ago, the Committee was expected to kickstart it’s work by submitting a workplan to the Ministry of Labour and Employment four days after the agreement was signed.
NLC hinted that, after signing the MoU with workers, “the Kaduna State Government has gone ahead to impugn all the clauses in the agreement freely entered with the Nigeria Labour Congress”.
In the petition addressed to the president and signed by the NLC’s president, Mr. Ayuba Wabba, NLC accused the Kaduna State governor of violating the terms of the agreement with the workers by victimizing its branch chairman in Kaduna state.
Some of the alleged violations commuted by the Kaduna State government include; “Refusal of the state government to honour/respect the Memorandum of Understanding signed at a meeting brokered by the Minister of Labour and Employment; continuous violation of workers’ rights as provided in our labour laws”.
NLC also accused the state governor of authorising punitive transfer of the state Chairperson of the NLC and sacking of workers for participating in the warning strike.
‘Violation of the “no victimization” clause in the signed agreement: . Nonadherence and respect for the rule of law,” said NLC.
In the letter, the NLC expressed its appreciation on the regard President has shown on the entire workforce in Nigeria and his for his intervention in the recent industrial dispute in Kaduna state occasioned by the decision of the Kaduna state Governor, Mr. Nasir El-Rufai, to arbitrarily sack thousands of workers in the state Public Service without recourse to the provisions of Nigerian laws.
Telecommunications companies have blocked access to Twitter in compliance with the Federal Government directives.
Many Twitter users woke up on Saturday to the inability to access the microblogging website.
Recall that on Friday, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed had announced the suspension of Twitter operations.
The announcement came after the platform yanked off a tweet of President Muhammadu Buhari on civil war.
In a statement made available to newsmen on Saturday, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), said they had started blocking access to Twitter.
The statement reads in bits, “We, The Association of Licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria wish to confirm that our members have received formal instructions from the Nigerian Communications Commission, the industry regulator to suspend access to Twitter.”
“ALTON has conducted a robust assessment of the directive in accordance with internationally accepted principles.
“Based on national interest provisions in the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003, and within the licence terms under which the industry operates; our members have acted in compliance with the directives of the Nigerian Communications Commission, the industry regulator.
“We will continue to engage all the relevant authorities and stakeholders and will act as may be further directed by the NCC. We remain committed to supporting the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and upholding the rights of citizens.
“As an industry, we endorse the position of the United Nations that the rights held by people offline must also be protected online. This includes respecting and protecting the rights of all people to communicate, to share information freely and responsibly, and to enjoy privacy and security regarding their data and their use of digital communications,” read the statement jointly signed by ALTON Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo; and ALTON Executive Secretary, Gbolahan Awonuga.
Many Nigerians have opted for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent the suspension of Twitter.
Human Rights Lawyer, Femi Falana said that the Federal Governmentwill soon suspend other media houses like CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera.
The lawyer said Nigerians will soon be restricted to watching and listening to the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) respectively, adding that the government would soon ban international news networks like CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera.
Professor Wole Soyinka has reacted to Friday’s indefinite suspension of Twitter operations in Nigeria by the Federal Government.
He made this known in a statement obtained by newsmen stating that, if President Muhammadu Buhari has a problem with Twitter, he should sort it out between them personally, the way ex-president Donald Trump of United States did.
Soyinka said he “Heard the news of Buhari’s ban on Twitter an hour or so after sending off TO SHOCK AND AWE to the print media. Kindly add my total lack of surprise at this petulant gesture, unbecoming of a democratically elected president.
He argued that “If Buhari has a problem with Twitter, he is advised to sort it out between them personally, the way Donald Trump did, not rope in the right to free expression of the Nigerian citizen as collateral damage.”
Soyinka added that “In any case, this is a technical problem Nigerians should be able to work their way around. The field of free expression remains wide open, free of any dictatorial spasms!”
Describing Buhari’s post on Nigeria’s civil war and threat of crackdown on Biafra agitators deleted by Twitter as unpresidential, Soyinka said “We heard it last during the heydays of Donald Rumsfeld under George Bush – and judge in what condition it has left that part of the world, and beyond. Rumsfeld’s namesake – a sobering coincidence – also spat the same gung-ho rhetoric. That Donald once ordered his uniformed forces to ‘go out there’ and ‘dominate the environment’, following civilian protests at extra-judicial killings of blacks by state police. Soon enough, leaving nothing to chance, that Donald II seized on the first opportunity to personally mobilize a mob to ‘dominate’ Capitol Hill, his own seat of government that was clearly slipping from his control.
“Optimists are free to underplay that threat to the much acclaimed democratic beacon. Study that scenario carefully however, and you find it is not a question of: it could never have succeeded. Such surmises are wrong, It COULD HAVE SUCCEEDED, albeit with unpredictable consequences for America and the world.
“And so when the elected head of a democratic state like Nigeria, not perched precariously on the knife edge of power but with a couple more years in the kitty, threatens to ‘shock’ dissidents, we should indeed be shocked out of any complacency. Even if History has been deliberately eliminated from the schools curriculum, Memory suffices to jerk us into a watchful, precautionary alert.
“I hold no brief for those who resort to burning down police stations, slaughter their occupants simply for the crime of earning a measly monthly pittance, torch electoral offices , assassinate politicians in calculated effort to set sections of the country against others in the promotion of their own political goals. These are largely nihilists, psychopaths and/or criminal lords, soul mates of Boko Haram, ISWAP, Da’esh and company, not to be confused with genuine liberators. All over the world, throughout history, elections are denounced, boycotted, and generally delegitimized without recourse to wanton butchery.
“When, however, a Head of State threatens to ‘shock’ civilian dissidents, to ‘deal with them in the language they understand’, and in a context that conveniently brackets opposition to governance with any bloodthirsting enemies of state, we have to call attention to the precedent language of such a national leader under even more provocative, nation disintegrative circumstances. What a pity, and what a tragic setting, to discover that this language was accessible all the time to President Buhari, where and when it truly mattered, when it would have been not only appropriate, but deserved and mandatory!
“When Benue was first massively brought under siege, with the massacre of innocent citizens, the destruction of farms, mass displacement followed by alien occupation, Buhari’s language – both as utterance and as what is known as ‘body language’ – was of a totally different temper. It was diffident, conciliatory, even apologetic. After much internal pressure, he eventually visited the scene of slaughter. His language? Learn to live peacefully with your neighbours. The expected language, rationally and legitimately applied to the aggressors, was exactly what we now hear – ‘I shall shock you. I shall deal with you in the language you understand’. That language was missing at the moment that mattered most. It remained “missing in action” for years until a belated “Shoot at sight” outburst. Too late, and of course, inappropriately phrased.
“The precedent had been set, the genie let out of the bottle, consolidating a culture of impunity that predictably spread its bloody stain all over the nation. Buhari’s recent deployment of this language is thus wrongly targeted, and tragically untimely. Even while he was threatening dissidents, an agenda of both secessionism and alien occupation was taking place not too distant from Aso Rock. ISWAP was taking over the already excised territories of Shekau’s Boko Haram, appointing new warlords of the occupational forces, sectioning Nigeria into vassal states and unfurling their replacement flags of domination. Soon, logically, ISWAP’s letters of diplomatic accreditation will be presented in Aso Rock?
“We must however backtrack a little – that is the function of memory. It would be false to suggest that these eggs of impunity are newly laid. They have been incubating in loathsome hatcheries of power and domination for years, even decades, and now the raptors have been hatched and taken wings. The political culture of the devil’s bargain, of denial, evasion, avoidance of constitutional mandates, the culture of ‘appeasement of the unappeasable’ – to quote myself – in order to gratify the vested interests of a narrow, power obsessed elite has blossomed. Finally, the chickens have come home to roost.
“The evocation of the Civil War, where millions of civilians perished, is an unworthy emotive ploy that has run its course. In any case – and this has been voiced all too often, and loudly – the nation is already at war, and of a far more potentially devastating dimension than it has ever known. Every single occupant of this nation space called Nigeria has been declared potential casualty, children being pushed to the very battlefront, without a semblance of protective cover. We have betrayed the future. We need no breast beating about past wars. The world has moved on, so have nations. Some, however, prefer to move backwards. The continent is full of these atavists. In Nigeria, powerful cliques of this persuasion still roam the corridors of power We are indeed at war. It does not take the formal declaration of hostilities, with or without lethal bombardments, for a nation to find itself shell-shocked. The populace of this nation is already in that shell-shocked condition. So, what is there left to shock?
“It is time to think ‘outside the box’. That many, in so doing, find no landing place except dissolution, is not a crime. It is not peculiar to any peoples, and is embedded in the ongoing history of many, and not only on this continent. It is their natural right as free citizens, not slaves of habit and indoctrination. Where disillusion rides high, sentiment tumbles earthwards, and the only question becomes: what can be salvaged? It thus remains the responsibility of leadership to persuade them, through both discourse and remedial action, that there are other options. Attempted bullying is not a language of discourse, nor the facile ploy of tarring all birds with the same feather. I shall end on a personal note. It was not intended but, in view of breast thumping rhetoric by one president after the other over military sacrifice – undeniable, certainly – such recalls should be considered salutary. The heroic exploits of our military in confronting some of the deadliest internal forces of dehumanization deserve their place of honour, not only in history, but in contemporary consciousness.
“However, let not the military fail to take its place centrally in the nation’s ongoing, unavoidable soul searching. And so to an instructive intervention by this ‘bloody civilian’, in what should be an exclusionary portfolio of the keepers of a nation’s mandate for secure existence.”
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos says it is illegal for the National Assembly to fix its own allowances.
In what is being described as a landmark judgment, Justice Chuka Obiozor said only the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission can fix salaries for public officers.
Obiozor delivered the judgement in a suit filed by a former Vice-President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr. Monday Ubani.
A former lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani, had said in March 2018 that he received N13.5m allowances monthly.
Ubani subsequently asked the court to decide if the National Assembly had the right to arbitrarily fix its allowances.
He also asked the court to order the National Assembly members to refund such jumbo allowances received.
The respondents in the case were the Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Attorney-General of the Federation, the National Assembly Service Commission and the RMAFC
In his ruling, Justice Obiozor said no other body or person in the country shall fix salary or allowances for any officer except RMAFC and it is illegal for anyone to do otherwise.
The judge, however, did not order that such allowances be refunded.
The National Assembly, which has 469 members, had been severely criticised for operating an opaque budget and refusing to reveal the allowances of its members.
The Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay, said Nigerian federal lawmakers are among the highest-earning lawmakers in the world.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has asked all Managing Directors of Banks, their Deputies and Executive Directors to submit their asset declaration forms.
According to a top source, the directive to the Managing Directors, Deputy Managing Directors and Executive Directors are contained in a June 1, 2021 letter to them.
The source said: “In line with the decision of the Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Abdulrasheed Bawa to demand for the assets declaration forms filed by bankers beginning from June 1, 2021, the commission has demanded for the assets declaration forms of the executive management of all banks in the country.
Listed among the officers whose assets declaration forms are expected by the Commission are managing directors, deputy managing directors and executive directors of all the banks.
“The request is pursuant to the Bank Employees, Etc. (Declaration of Assets) Act, 1986, which mandates bankers to declare assets upon employment and annually thereafter.
“Violators of the law risk imprisonment for a term of up to ten years.”
The top executives are first on the list of bankers expected to declare their assets
The Federal Government may have ignited a social media war it may not be able to win, with the suspension of Twitter for deleting President Buhari’s twit for what Twitter considered as offensive.
Shortly after announcing Twitter operation in Nigeria, Facebook joined Twitter in banning President Buhari’s civil war controversial message on its platform, saying that it violates its standards and capable if inciting violence.
With this action, President Buhari’s entire message had been removed from facebook following the ban on Twitter on Friday by the federal government.
Saying, ” In line with our global policies, we have removed a post from Presidenr Buhari’s facebook page for violating our community standards against inciting violence.
“We remove any content from individual or organisation that violates our policies on facebook,” facebook said.
It would be recalled that President Buhari had made a post against the South East region of Nigeria via his official facebook page early in the week when INEC management led by its chairman, submitted a report on attacks on its facilities across the country.
Nigerians have deviced ways to circumvent the federal government’s ban on global microblogging giant, Twitter as they have opted for the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent the suspension of Twitter by the Federal Government.
It would be recalled that on Friday, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information, announced the suspension of the social media platform’s operation in Nigeria.
The minister based the action on the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.
However, many have expressed dissatisfaction with the development, highlighting the benefits of the microblogging site.
Below are some reactions.
Meanwhile, human rights group, Amnesty International, has demanded an immediate reversal of the suspension of the operations of Twitter.
On Friday, Minister of Information, announced that the Federal Government had suspended the microblogging site over the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.
The action of the government had generated different reactions.
In a statement, Amnesty International said the suspension is not compatible with Nigeria’s international obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
“Amnesty International condemns the Nigerian government’s suspension of Twitter in Nigeria — a social media widely used by Nigerians to exercise their human rights, including their rights to freedom of expression and access to information.”
“We call on the #Nigerian authorities to immediately reverse the unlawful suspension and other plans to gag the media, repress the civic space, and undermine Nigerians’ human rights.
“This action is clearly inconsistent and incompatible with Nigeria’s international obligations including under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
The Federal Government took the action days after Twitter yanked off a tweet of President Muhammadu Buhari that it said violated its rules.
The platform had flagged one of Buhari’s tweets on the 1967 civil war.
The Embassy of Sweden in Abuja has reacted to the Twitter ban by the Nigerian government.
The reaction came on Friday night through the embassy’s Twitter account.
“Nigerians have a constitutional right to exercise their freedom of expression and a right of information. This must be respected. Safeguarding free, independent media and civic spaces for democratic voices is an important part of Sweden’s drive for democracy,” the Swedish Embassy stated.
The Twitter ban was announced on Friday afternoon through the official Twitter handle of the Ministry of Information and Culture.
Similarly, the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA),Olumide Akpata, equally reacted to the ban by noting that Nigeria operates in a constitutional democracy and therefore everything must be done according to law.
Akpata stated that part of the implication of the ban was on the right of Nigerians to “freely express their constitutionally guaranteed opinions through that medium”.
He also noted that the licensing of all OTT and social media operations by the Nigerian Communications Commission was another attempt to stifle freedom of speech and shrink civic space.
According to him; “The Nigerian Bar Association finds no constitutional or legal authority to support the peremptory action of the Federal Government to suspend the operations of Twitter in Nigeria,” Akpata said.
“Beyond the dent on our constitutional democracy, at a time when the Nigerian economy is unarguably struggling the impact of arbitrary decisions such as this on investor confidence is better imagined.”
He added that if the ban is not reversed, the NBA will challenge it in court in the interest of the public and democracy in the country.
The Federal Government has said that courts and state assemblies will re-open next week.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, made this known in Abuja on Friday shortly after a meeting between the government delegation and striking workers to smoothen the grey areas in the Memorandum of Action (MOA) reached on May 20, 2021.
The dispute between the federal government and the duo of the Judicial Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) and Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASAN) were resolved at the meeting, according to Ngige.
Recall that JUSUN and PASAN have been on a nationwide industrial action for weeks.
The unions are protesting over the non-implementation of autonomy for State judiciary and legislature by the governors.
Briefing newsmen on the outcome of the meeting, Ngige said the 36 governors, led by the Chairman of the Governors Forum, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State and his Deputy, Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State, have put their pen on paper on behalf of their colleagues on the historic agreement which they reached on May 20th.
According to the Minister, “with what they achieved at the meeting, it is expected that the courts and state assemblies would re-open next week, since all the grey areas have been smoothened.
“So today we met with the unions in a small dialogue to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in the agreement which we agreed will take effect from 20th of May.
“Right now, we expect the unions to go back to their members and give them final briefing on what we have achieved today.
“And with this achievement of today, we are hopeful that by next week, the chambers of our courts and the doors of the state assemblies will be open for business activities to begin.”
Ngige said they were not oblivious that this situation had posed serious challenges to the nation, especially as the courts are closed and the law enforcement agencies have no place to take arrested criminals.
He, therefore, thanked the unions for all the efforts put in place in the final round of the dialogue in which the modalities that were not very clear the last time they met had been sorted to the satisfaction of both sides.
The Deputy President of JUSUN, Comrade Emmanuel Abisoye, thanked Ngige for his efforts in resolving the dispute, saying that he expects all the parties to fulfill their own part of the agreement.
Abisoye assured that JUSUN will play its own part and expressed hope that the governors will do the needful to ensure that industrial harmony returns to the courts.
The President of PASAN, Comrade Mohammed Usman, expressed hope that all stakeholders would do the needful within the shortest possible period to see that the workers in the state legislatures return to work.
In the same vein, the President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba Wabba, thanked all the parties for reaching the milestone.
“It is necessary to ensure that industrial harmony strives in this sector of our economy. It is important that this issue is put behind us,” Wabba said.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Niger Delta Affairs and Secretary of the Implementation Committee for Judicial/Legislative Autonomy, Senator Ita Enang, thanked Mr President and the Labour Minister for their efforts thus far to attain autonomy for the state legislature and judiciary.
