The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and its affiliate unions, yesterday, accused the leadership of the National Assembly of sidelining national interest in its recent debate on constitution amendment.
At the end of a protest rally in Abuja, the NLC's President, Abdulwahed Omar, in a letter to the Senate President, David Mark and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, restated the demand of labour and other civil society organisations for genuine electoral reforms and the removal of the incumbent Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Maurice Iwu.
In the letter also signed by the President General, Trade union Congress, Peter Esele, and co-chair, Labour and Civil Society Coalition, Dipo Fashina, the NLC called for the establishment of an independent INEC, while persons having issues with their elections should not be sworn into office until all election petitions have been resolved.
It also made a case for the creation of a level playing field for all political interests.
The NLC listed the issues, which it described as "the popular aspirations of Nigerians" to include "the need to make the peoples' vote count by providing for an electoral arbiter in the INEC that would be truly independent, fair, efficient and which would not do the bidding of the President or political party in control of state power at each of the levels of governance".
The other issue has to do with "the need to ensure that those who engage in massive rigging of elections do not get sworn into office until election results had been validly challenged in the courts," as well as "the need to create a level playing field for all political interests, not cluttered by big money, godfathers, gender identities, regionalism, ethnicity and other primordial concerns.
"We strongly believe that the amendments to these key sections will not augur well for entrenching democratic ethos and issues-based politics in Nigeria," it noted.
Citing the example of a public official elected on the political platform crossing over to another party with different manifesto and programmes, the NLC argued that in the light of recent political experience in the country, such a movement would do "violent damage to the country's desire to consolidate on her democratic norms".
Remove Iwu
It also said to continue to vest the powers to appoint the INEC Chairman in the Presidency, despite the high level of partisanship experienced in recent times amounts to an affront on the wishes of Nigerians.
Urging the National Assembly ensure that Mr. Iwu's tenure is not renewed when it comes to an end next June, as its electoral conduct brought shame on the nation, the NLC said the "monumental costs in unprecedented re-run elections should not be allowed a day more".
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