Strike: Electricity Workers Shut Down Control Center As Security Operatives Guard Osun Govt Secretariat

Members of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) close the gates of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in Osogbo

On Monday, armed security personnel from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) and Nigeria police took up positions at the entrance of the Osun State Government Secretariat in Abere.

The gates had been shut in compliance with the nationwide strike action called by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

Workers attempting to resume special duties at the secretariat were turned away by the NLC’s Osun compliance team.

It was part of the efforts to enforce the strike, which aims to pressure the government into increasing national minimum wage for workers.

Simultaneously, members of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) closed the gates of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in Osogbo and barricaded the entrance to the electricity control center.

The NUEE’s compliance team, led by Comrade Musibau Okunloye, Chairman of Lagos Generation and Transmission Council, besieged the TCN gate along Ikirun road and used a white private car to block the road after shutting the gate.

Speaking to journalists, Comrade Okunloye, said: “No workers are inside the offices, we have withdrawn them from service because of a directive from the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress due to those issues that we are agitating for.

“The minimum wage and the hike in electricity tariff, are the two major issues and these two issues concern generality of Nigerians, not only workers.

“See this tariff hike in electricity, it is too bad. There is nowhere in the world where you will see the industry and ordinary commercial and the residence increasing the same tariff.

“My appeal to the Federal government is to listen to labour and agree with them. Labour is forced to be reckoned with. But in Nigeria today, we are seeing labour, they are nothing. So they should consider labour first in any policy that they have now.”