Head of Information of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Benson Upah, has said that the Nigerian government facilitated the arrest of the NLC President, Joe Ajaero, by the Department of State Service (DSS) to distract Labour from the fact that the government had increased the pump price of fuel and wants to enforce other policies that it did not want any opposition to.
Upah said this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Tuesday, where he said that the way that the government has gone about this matter is how dictatorship starts in a nation.
The NLC Information head, during the interview, denied the claim by the DSS that Ajaero had been issued an invitation for an interrogation, one which he allegedly denied. He said, “Comrade Joe Ajaero was not given any invitation, he was simply ambushed at the airport on his way to the UK to attend the conference of ITUC Global, and we consider this not only an embarrassment, but an act of lawlessness in a country that claims to practice democracy. But of course, we see this for what it is.
“It is a diversionary tactic to sway us away from the path of focus and concentration. You know, the government has just introduced another band of PMS pricing, and does not want us to focus on that. So, it has to look for something else to divert our attention, so, it is part of this process that this has happened, and we consider it illegal, unlawful.”
“This is how dictatorship starts, it creeps in. People look the other way believing that it will not come to them.”
“Quite amazingly, this is being practiced by those who held themselves out yesterday as promoters of democracy. They should be ashamed of themselves. These are the very guys who went into exile doing this to innocent citizens believing that we will be cowed, but we will never be cowed. The Nigerian spirit is in us, it is a robust spirit, nobody is going to defeat this spirit in us. We are Nigerians, and we will continue to do the right thing,” he added.
Upah then said, “For us, as far as we are concerned, no invitation was extended to us before this arrest, and up till now, no reasonable explanation has been given. We can only speculate. As I have said earlier on, the government has some policies that it wants to unravel and does not want any opposition voice to be heard. Government has been battering us and wants to be cheered, wants us to cheer it into our own graves. But we keep insisting, we’re not going to be cheerleaders, we will keep on protesting, even to the last drop of blood in us.”
He was then asked what he believed the motive of the government was in this case, to which he replied, “We can only speculate the motives of the government. Even if there was an interrogation that this was linked to the end hunger protests, I mean, we keep on seeing it as a façade, because I tell you, on July 22nd, we issued a statement stating clearly that we are not part of the protest. In the 23rd, we issued another unambiguous statement. On the 1st of August, we issued a clearer one, and everything points to the fact that we were not part of this protest.
“Looking back now, perhaps we should have joined this protest, because had we joined this protest, they would not even have had audacity to raid our headquarters in the first place had we joined this protest, because they know our capability, they know our capacity, and they know they will never underrate our will. We’ve got nothing to do with all of this, we’ve got nothing to do with subversion, we’ve got nothing to do with treasonable felony, we’ve got nothing to do with cybercrime, terrorism financing and all that, and these guys know it, they know those who are involved. They know them, but they are scared of going after them.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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