Meanwhile, The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) slammed the plan of the Federal Government to distribute N500bn as palliatives to Nigerians and government officials to cushion the effects of the removal of fuel subsidy.
The NLC, in a statement by its President, Joe Ajaero, argued that the Federal Government was “seeking to impoverish the people further by taking steps that can only be described as robbing the people of Nigeria to pay and feed the Rich”.
Ajaero, said rather than reciprocate the goodwill of Nigerian workers, the Federal Government had “insisted on threading the path of dictatorship”.
The organisation in Nigeria recalled that the $800m already proposed before the government’s devaluation of the naira was worth about N400bn, but had risen to about N650bn post-devaluation.
The congress says the proposal to pay N8,000 to each of the so-called 12 million poorest Nigerian households for six months insults our collective intelligence and makes a mockery of our patience and abiding faith in social dialogue which the government may have alluded to albeit pretentiously.
According to the NLC, the further proposal to pay National Assembly members the sum of N70bn and the judiciary N36bn is “the most insensitive, reckless and brazen diversion of our collective patrimony into the pockets of public officers whose sworn responsibility it is to protect our nation’s treasury.
