Organised Labour Unions In Nigeria Want Corrupt Politicians Killed

Nigeria’s organised labour unions-the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress-have jointly called for capital punishment for anybody found guilty of corruption in the country.

Punch Newspaper reports that the President of the NLC, Mr. Ayuba Wabba, and his counterpart in the TUC, Mr. Bobboi Kaigama, made the call on Tuesday at a press conference on a national rally against corruption.

The rally is scheduled for Thursday (tomorrow).

The union leaders said they would lead workers in a solidarity march to the office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the National Assembly complex and the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to declare support for President Muhammadu Buhari’s campaign against corruption.

Wabba said, “He who goes to equity must go with clean hand. Part of the attributes of good governance is that we must have a minimum standard of transparency and accountability.

“If capital punishment was introduced and worked elsewhere to eliminate corruption, then we are for it. If it worked in China, we must be ambitious enough to move beyond our lamentation to arrive at our destination.

“The organised labour is in support of capital punishment to eradicate or at least reduce the scourge of corruption.

“In the twilight of the last administration, there were allegations by no less a person than the former Governor of the CBN, Sanusi Lamido, that billions of dollars was unaccounted for by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation; this led to his eventual suspension from office as CBN governor.

“The Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative indicated losses due to crude oil swaps to subsidy and domestic crude allocations from 2005 to 2012, showing that USD$11.63bn had been paid to the NNPC, but that there was no evidence of the money being remitted to the Federation Account. NEITI also discovered that another USD$11.6bn was missing from Nigeria’s Liquefied Natural Gas company dividend payment.”