The leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says Nigeria’s democracy has served only the political class and not the average Nigerians.
The labour union lamented that those that were elected as democratic leaders had not only turned around to serve themselves but continued to exploit every given opportunity to “turn the rest of us into paupers in our own land.”
Ayuba Wabba, NLC President, in a statement issued to mark this year Democracy Day, said the political class have skewed everything in the country in their own favour to the exclusion of the workers, while they frequently dip fingers into the public till.
This, according to him, made a mockery of democracy.
Wabba said a democracy that does not allocate resources in such a manner that ensures equity, justice and sustained national development or cohesion is beggarly.
“We reason that Nigerian workers are frequently turned into canon fodder by the Nigerian political elite in their high stakes political games and mindless scramble for the commonwealth,” he said.
He also expressed worry that despite escalating costs of living, devaluation of the naira and general hardship in the land, the Nigerian worker is still forced to survive on N18,000 as minimum wage as state governments owe backlog of salaries and pensions.
While pensioners in not a few states wallow in misery and unimaginable suffering, Wabba said, members of the political elite led by state governors as a matter of ‘law’ and policy, take in advance whopping severance packages to which they are not entitled in the first place.
“How well has this democracy uplifted the spaces where we live and work? Without prejudice to the effort of this government, our infrastructure is still in tatters. Our roads are impassable and public electricity supply remains epileptic,” he said.
He added that the spate of killings, general wave of violence and insecurity across the country further traumatise the hapless citizenry.
Speaking on the fight against corruption, the NLC President said in spite of the great effort by the Buhari administration to fight corruption, corruption keeps fighting back more viciously.
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