By PAMELA EBOH, Awka

A rights group, Education Rights Campaign (ERC), has commended the decision of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to embark on a two-day national protest billed for July 26 and 27 to force government to meet the demands of ASUU and other university unions.

It said that though the decision is coming very late in the day, that it is a step in the right direction.

The group in a statement on Wednesday signed by the Deputy National Coordinator, Ogunjinmi Isaac and Adaramoye Michael Lenin, National Mobilization Officer, respectively, urged the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to align with the position of the NLC and mobilize its members to jointly prosecute the two-day national protest.

It also called on Nigerian students, students unions, radical students groups, NANS and civil society organizations to answer the call of the NLC by mobilizing to join organized labour on July 26 and 27 for the protest.

ERC urged the various groups to draw in as many forces as possible to ensure active mobilization, and the NLC to direct its state councils to convene state planning meetings within the next few days.

The statement partly read: “ERC has been at the forefront of calling on NLC and TUC to embark on a series of mass action to defend public education from the claws of the capitalist ruling class who are hell-bent on not just ruining it, but also taking it out of the reach of children of the working masses.

“At the same time, we call for the independent preparation of the mass of students, parents and well-meaning Nigerians for the July 26 and 27 protests.

“In the event that the NLC calls off the protest before the set date as is their usual practice, we ask that students, parents, education workers and workers generally should go on to protest independently for the reopening of schools and to make the federal government yield to the demands of the public university unions.

“To achieve this, we ask students, parents and workers across all states to start organizing independent protest committees that can work with the NLC state councils to organize the protest while remaining independent of it.

“While we consider NLC’s decision to embark on a protest in the right direction, we equally warn against late-minute suspension of the protest without any democratic discussion or any concrete resolution of the crisis. We make this point against the background of the constant suspension of strikes and mass action by NLC without any resolution of the crisis the action was intended to resolve.

“For instance, in January this year the NLC and TUC declared a protest over the planned removal of fuel subsidy only to call it off at the eleventh hour. Similar thing happened in 2020, when the NLC called off its planned strike scheduled to commence on September 28 that year.”

The group stressed that the success of the protest can send a clear warning to the capitalist elite noting however, that far more would be required to win victory.

ErRC reasoned that victory may be not be easy because the President Muhammadu Buhari APC government appear to recognize that conceding to the demands of public university unions may provoke a contagion of demands for wage review and sundry issues across the labour movement especially in the context of economic crisis, inflation and worsening living standards.

It further held that there is need for a summit on the ASUU strike and the deteriorating state of public education, saying that such summit will be constituted by pro-masses organizations, the trade unions, students’ unions and professional bodies like the NBA.

While noting that such conference must be used to deliberate on the way forward and map out line of actions beyond the planned protest by NLC, it enjoined the NLC and TUC to begin to prepare for a 48 hour general strike as the next stage after the July 26 and 27 national protest.

ERC added: “In the Education Rights Campaign (ERC), it is our clear belief that the crisis bedeviling the education sector requires proper funding of the sector at all levels.

“While we call for proper funding of the education sector, we also demand democratic management of institutions. By democratic management of institutions, we mean that students and workers play active role in the decision making organs of tertiary institutions through elected representatives of the unions.

“This may not be achieved without a struggle by the working masses, youths and students to wrest power from the capitalist ruling class and establish a socialist society where resources are democratically owned and managed by the working masses to meet the aspiration of Nigerians for free and quality education, decent quality of life and a better society.”