Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Ekiti State chapter, Com. Ade Adesanmi, has said the fear of divided loyalty to the government of the day makes it imperative for workers not to dabble into partisan politics desite the fact that no law in the country insulated them from exercising their rights.
Adesanmi said the people had the widespread erroneous belief that partisan politics is criminal and outrightly forbidden in the country’s Civil Service, saying the fear that workers with partisan interest could sabotage the government of the day accounted for why such practice was not being encouraged and not because they were barred by the law.
The NLC boss clarified that aside from a supreme court’s verdict that had laid the matter to rest, the formation of the Labour Party (LP) by Nigerian workers was suffice to corroborate his assertion.
Adesanmi also denied the allegation that labour leaders in Ekiti collected a staggering sum of N25 million from the opposition All Progressives Congress to call out the recent industrial strike embarked on by workers, describing the accusation as an insult to Ekiti workers.
Speaking in Ado Ekiti at the weekend, Adesanmi appealed to Ekiti workers to be loyal to the government of Ayo Fayose’s administration to prevent anarchy in the system.
He said: “Let me just say this, there is a supreme court’s judgement that had laid that to rest . What did that judgement say, it said workers can participate in politics, because they too are part of the society.
“But in spite of this, we are not encouraging divided loyalty , we have to be loyal to the government of the day and that is why we are discouraging our people from participating in partisan politics.
“Let me also add that if there was no court judgement backing us, the labour shouldn’t have registered Labour Party with INEC. But sad enough, the LP has been taken over by politicians and moneybags. They have taken over the party from workers because we have no money.
“Be that as it may, workers must be loyal to the government of the day, even while having political sympathy,” he said.
On the bribery allegation leveled against the organized labour in Ekiti, owing to suspicion on how the 6-week strike they declared to press for the prompt payment of workers’ salaries ended, Adesanmi accused a sitting female senator from Ekiti of
being behind the ‘unfounded accusation’.
“The issue of us getting N25 million bribe from the opposition and the N10 million they said we collected from the government were cheer blackmail. We have investigated the matter very well and we got to know that a certain female senator from Ekiti was behind the allegation.
“But let me say here that the crops of NLC leaders we have in Ekiti are not the type that will compromise . We have never done that and we will never do it”, he said.
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