The Nigeria Labour Congress, has disclosed that the two-day nationwide protest by its members is about hunger and the economic hardship facing the nation.
Revealing this to the public on Tuesday, the National President of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, led this out while addressing newsmen in Abuja.
He said that, contrary to the claim made by the Presidency that the ongoing protest is needless and about the minimum wage review, the union is not protesting only about the review of the country’s minimum wage.
Ajaero said: “You have to understand it. This protest is about hunger. What of those who are not working?
“The minimum wage, when will it be completed? When will it be implemented? What will be the minimum wage that will remove hunger?
“The UN said that every poorest man should be fed on $2 per day. That’s the poorest. And if you have a family of six people, $2 per day by six is $12.
READ MORE: NLC Crisis: “Who Ordered The Attack?” – Ajaero Queries Imo Govt
“In a month, you have $360 which translates to about N700,000. Is that the minimum wage you’re talking about? Is that what will feed you? That’s feeding alone. I’m not talking about transportation and accommodation. So what are we saying? What about medical? What are we saying?
“Well, you know, we don’t, we don’t tell them what to do. We will tell them how we feel. There was hunger in the land, but it wasn’t this bad until deregulation. And then after the regulation, we proposed all that we needed to. If they had solved the problem of transportation immediately, they would have solved almost 50% of the problem.
“So the moment they touch PMS, you can’t fill your tank with N30,000, N40,000. So the moment they touched it. We said, ‘OK, bring CNG buses. This is 7-8 months, no one bus is on the street.”
