The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has described the recent attack by gun men on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Abuja office as an “audacity of corruption. The NLC, therefore, urged the commission and other related agencies to beef up security on their premises and personnel.
It also charged the commission not to succumb to intimidation, rather to do all necessary to secure the organisation.
In a statement signed by the NLC President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, he noted that the organisation needed technical support to build its forensic capacity without which cases would be lost or drag on indefinitely in court, thus, exposing the personnel to danger.
“We also find it necessary to call on the government to give the commission the requisite support, including the setting up of dedicated courts for speedy disposal of corruption cases,” he said. Wabba said the recent attack the battleground from the court room to the streets, and should be condemned by all those who love the country.
According to him, the attack was intended to deter operatives of the EFCC from carrying on to a logical conclusion their ongoing investigations/prosecutions.
He said: “In light of an earlier attack during which an operative sustained injuries, this cannot be a lone incident. Indeed, we see it as the new phase of corruption fighting back.
“While we are not insensitive to the manifest danger in this new phase of corruption fighting back, we urge the commission and its operatives not to succumb to these desperate tactics or intimidation.”
Wabba stated that Labour had no doubt that the resort to violence showed that those behind the attack have come to their wits’ end.
In a related development, the NLC has taken a swipe at the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Prof Itse Sagay, over his call to move workers minimum wage law from the exclusive to the concurrent legislative list.
Wabba stated this in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, after the launch of the congress’ annual Rain School Programme.
Wabba said the PACAC chairman has neglected the work of the committee he has been saddled with but ventured into an area that he has scanty knowledge about.
The NLC boss accused Sagay of not delivering on the Committee’s Mandate of taming corruption in the country, urging him to focus on that assignment rather than making suggestions outside the purview of the committee.
Wabba said that a country that pays its workers poorly can never reduce corruption to the barest minimum, stressing that even a layman knows that poorly paid workers would not be in a position to resist corrupt tendencies.
He said that Nigerian workers would resist any attempt to move the Minimum Wage Law to the concurrent list because other nations’ minimum wage is a national issue in their constitutions.
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