From Atiku Sarki, Abuja
The Nigeria Labour Congress has called on its members and affiliates to urgently develop strategies to confront what it described as rising legal and political assaults on workers’ rights across the country.
NLC President, Joe Ajaero, gave the charge during the opening of the 2025 Harmattan School in Abuja, where he warned that unions must now defend not only their rights as workers but also their survival as citizens of a nation facing deepening fractures.
Ajaero, speaking at the event held at Top Rank Hotel, Utako, said the task before labour leaders at the annual school was “a heavy one,” stressing that the working class must understand the links between technology, capital and insecurity in order to build an effective response that places people above profit.
He recalled that the NLC Rain School held earlier in the year in Uyo, Akwa Ibom, recorded huge success, adding that the Harmattan School should not be treated as a mere academic retreat, but as “a conclave of the conscious vanguard of the Nigerian working people.”
“In a world clouded by a worsening global economic crisis, accelerated by the relentless engine of technological change, we gather here to sharpen our tools of analysis and our weapons of struggle,” he said.
Ajaero noted that the theme of this year’s edition, Workers’ Rights in the Context of Global Economic Crises and Technological Advancement, was not only timely but also a strategic necessity for the survival and advancement of workers.
He warned that workers were now confronted by a dual assault: intensified exploitation in workplaces and increasing alienation of their rights in the political arena. According to him, Nigerian workers and the masses face “an onslaught at all fronts” from what he described as “remorseless agents of capital.”
He cited ongoing labour rights concerns at the Dangote conglomerate, the NLNG Train 7 project, and other “enclaves of slavish work” across the country, saying some companies operate as “a state within a state” where union rights are suppressed and workers are treated as expendable.
The NLC President also alleged moves within government circles to introduce specific laws creating Special Economic Zones and Industrial Enclaves that would legalise the erosion of labour rights, describing such efforts as “the legal codification of class warfare.”
He further accused some actors of attempting to hijack the leadership structures of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) and the National Pension Commission (PENCOM) through various schemes aimed at undermining workers’ collective ownership of the institutions.
“They want to turn our collective savings and insurance into a slush fund for the ruling class to be plundered at will. This agenda is afoot, and our resistance must be equally vigorous and unyielding,” he said.
Ajaero added that whether on factory floors, in mining sites or in the boardrooms of NSITF and PENCOM—including engagements with the National Assembly and the Judiciary—workers face a common adversary.
“Our response must be the organised resistance of the working-class vanguard,” he declared.
