The Executive Chairman, Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice (CHRSJ), Comrade Alimi Sulaiman Adeniyi, has strongly condemned “the archaic type of economic policy of President Muhammadu Buhari, which has made life unbearable for the poor masses of the country. He lamented that “the All Progressives Congress (APC) government has totally failed the electorate that cast 85 per cent their votes for him during the March 28, 2015 presidential election,” adding that rather than effecting the needed change to problems ravaging the nation, Buhari has turned himself to a globe-trotting president in search of foreign help. “This is not what the masses bargained for during the campaign,” Comrade Adeniyi said.

The CHRSJ boss equally faulted Buhari’s economic policy which has increased the untold hardship of the masses far more than he met it, noting that the masses found it difficult to eat two good meals in a day, as rice which the most popular and widely consumed staple food “currently sells at the rate of N600 per Congo in the market.”

As a result, he strongly condemned President Buhari “for encouraging the importation of grass for cow of his Fulani kinsmen (Fulani herdsmen), while he banned the importation of rice for Nigeria people.” He described President Buhari’s discriminatory action as “inhuman, anti-masses, ungodly, unconstitutional, evil and crime against humanity and God.”

Comrade Adeniyi who was speaking with Labour Correspondents during the ‘Mass Symposium to Resist the New Electricity Tariff, Lingering Fuel Crisis and Slave Wages’ held at the Textile Labour House, Agidingbi-Ikeja, Lagos, frowned at the way and manner most labour and CSOs’ leadership in the country betrayed the trust of the people, especially the workers, for selfish aggrandisement. He cited the Osun State crisis, where the state chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Jacobs Adekomi, in collaboration with Mr Waba, were trading the welfare of workers for their selfish interest.

The rights activist recalled the 2012 fuel subsidy protest, “which was later betrayed by then National President of Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Mr. Abdul Waheed Umar and Mr Peter Esele respectively, with their executive council members.” He condemned the NLC president for joining Adekomi in betraying Osun and other states’

workers in the wake of the lingering salaries crisis across the federation, because of the criminal financial mismanagement of state governors.

Adeniji, who doubles as Chairman, Civil Societies Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State, advised Waba and Ajaero factions of the Nigeria Labour Congress to close ranks and settle the current rift in the nation’s labour movement, in order to pave way for them to have a common front to fight for the welfare of their members. He urged the NLC leaders to tender an unreserved apology to the Nigeria workers for misleading them in the recent past.

•Photo shows CHRSJ Executive Chairman, Comrade Adeniyi.

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