Politics
ADF condemns incessant harassment of NLC president, Joe Ajaero
The AlaIgbo Development Foundation (ADF) has strongly condemned “the on-going incessant and serial harassment, arrest and intimidation mounted against the President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr. Joe Ajaero by the security agencies of the Federal government of Nigeria.”
Ajaero was arrested on Monday by operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS), while trying to fly overseas for an official engagement. He was subsequently granted administrative bail.
The ADF which condemned the arrest in a statement by its president, Prof Ukachukwu Awuzie, and its secretary, Chief Abia Onyike, noted that after a critical review of Ajaero’s recent encounters with the security agencies, ” it has come to the inescapable conclusion that the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is hell-bent on plunging Nigeria backwards into the abyss of draconian rule, characterized by illegal arrests and punitive detention of innocent citizens.”
The ADF said it “views this ill-advised strategy of intimidation and harassment of civil society leaders as an admission by the Tinubu administration that it has failed woefully to defend the nation’s democracy because of the catastrophic failure it has recorded in its economic policies, which have yielded nothing but mass poverty and unbelievable level of hunger amongst the citizenry.
“Infact, we dare to aver that the Tinubu administration now constitutes a major affront on Nigeria’s hard-won democracy. It is unfortunate that President Tinubu has decided to toe this ignoble line whereby he uses the security agencies to deploy force and intimidation to implement his anti-people economic policies, after having sold out to international finance capital and the imperialist metropolis of the North-Atlantic Western powers.”
Continuing, the ADF said it wishes to call on President Tinubu to retrace his steps by reviewing his draconian economic policies before it gets too late.
“He should review his anti-people policies now instead of using crude tactics to crack down on leaders of mass organizations thereby plunging Nigeria to another ugly era of extreme authoritarianism and totalitarianism,” the statement added.
“The ADF supports the intervention of popular-democratic organizations, the labour movement and civil society groups in their opposition against Tinubu’s vicious economic policies. We appreciate the fact that the Nigerian labour movement today represents the only strong banner of opposition that can challenge the Tinubu administration after the National Assembly and the Judiciary has been weakened. This explains the desperation of the regime and its determination to decimate the leadership of the labour movement.”
The ADF also condemned without any iota of equivocation, the invasion of the offices of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Projects (SERAP) in Abuja by security agencies.
“The invasion of the Abuja office of SERAP followed an ultimatum made by the Organization to the Tinubu administration to reverse the current petroleum price hike introduced by NNPC which is an agency of the Federal Government,” it said.
“ADF believes that there is no way Nigeria’s democracy can be consolidated under horrible economic policies where the masses are traumatized by poverty and pestilence.”
