| President of the NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba |
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President Ayuba Wabba on Tuesday called for a review of obsolete labour laws in the country to bring them up to date with international best practices.
He said doing so would make the laws more effective to defend the rights of workers across the country.
Wabba spoke at the inauguration of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network in Abuja, the nation’s capital.
The NLC president frowned at a situation where issues affecting workers are treated on ad hoc basis instead of following the standard stipulated by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which recommends a tripartite body to address issues concerning workers.
He said the absence of the Nigeria Labour Advisory Council had relegated issues on workers’ rights to an ad hoc arrangement against the ILO conventions that employers, government and labour should sit at a round-table to address issues on workers.
Wabba maintained that among the strongest pillars of democracy are the civil society groups and organised labour.
He noted that “once you weaken those two institutions, it then means that democracy itself will be weakened and the rule of law will also be weakened”.
The NLC president said the inauguration of the body would “provide us yet another opportunity to synergise because there have been a lot of changes in the world of work”.