NLC's troubling agitations

Some 10 days after the now highly politicised Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) threatened mass action should the senate decline to approve mandatory real-time e-transmission of election results, the National Assembly finally harmonised their amendments to the Electoral Act 2022, mercifully some distance from the populist bent of the House of Representatives version. It provides for e-transmission quite all right, but it neither made it mandatory nor provided for real-time upload of results. If there are communication challenges, the 2026 Act provides for Form EC8A to form the primary basis for the collation and declaration of election results. By last Wednesday, a day after the Act was passed, President Tinubu signed it into law. This will, of course, displease those who had flexed muscles over the Act, including the NLC which threatened to storm the senate.

Read Also: NLC calls for power sector review

The Electoral Act 2026 is a true reflection of the culmination of the bargains and harmonisation that took place in the National Assembly before it was passed. The question is not what next for the NLC and its threats but whether a labour union should hide under civil society activism to engage in brazen partisanship. At the drop of a hat, it warns of mass action. In addition, it even runs a political party and has been unable over the years to draw a line between unionism and political partisanship. The law guiding trade unionism in Nigeria needs to be reviewed before the NLC one day holds the entire nation to ransom. It pleases those benefiting from NLC's nihilistic approach to support them and promote their cause, but on a hypothetical tomorrow, the NLC will be in new hands and the union will endanger the interest it supports today.

Sadly, fuelling the hysteria on the streets is the unsupportable argument that the 2023 presidential poll was marred by non-transmission of election results, and the equally illogical and atrocious belief that the Labour Party (LP) probably won the poll. It really beggars belief that fact and fiction could so intermingle in the minds of some Nigerians that they embrace fantasy. Watch the NLC closely. It is too far gone in politics, and its leaders too compromised and partisan, to offer workers the kind of leadership that is truly national and non-partisan.