Comrade Hassan Sunmonu was the pioneer president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), between 1978 and 1984. He is also a former secretary-general of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU). In this interview with Daily Trust on Sunday at his residence in Osogbo, the capital of Osun State, he spoke on the origin of the NLC, its evolution, challenges, leadership tussle and other issues.
The Nigeria Labour Congress is known to have led a lot of struggles for the welfare of workers and other national issues, what led to its formation?
The first NLC was founded in 1950, but it collapsed in 1953. The second one was founded between December 18 and 20, 1975. Before the formation of the second NLC, there were four national trade unions – the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC), United Labour Congress of Nigeria (ULCN), Labour Unity Front (LUF) and the Nigeria Workers Council (NWC).
During the burial of a trade union leader, J.A Oduleye, at Apena cemetery in Ebute-Meta, Lagos in September 21, 1974, leaders of the four trade unions presented separate speeches. They said it was a shame that they came in four groups instead of being a united body. Their speeches were later tagged Apena Cemetery Declaration.
As a result of that declaration, a 50-man steering committee was set up, comprising members from the four trade union centres and the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), which was not affiliated to any of the four centres. The steering committee was put in place to prepare the ground to founding one united trade union centre. I was a member of that steering committee and we worked for 15 months. The efforts led to the inauguration of the second NLC in December 1975.
In conformity to the extant laws of that time, each of the four centres called special congresses of their delegates, moved motions to dissolve themselves and surrender their certificates to pave way for the formation of the NLC.
Leaders of the four centres met and decided to share positions for the second NLC instead of conducting an election. The selected names were presented to the inaugural conference of the NLC for ratification. I was one of the 19 vice presidents who came out of that second NLC. But about eight trade union leaders, including Antom Ogbola, Augustine Mba, Pascal Bafyau, who were not satisfied with the selection as agreed by leaders of the four trade union centres, wrote a petition to the Federal Military Government and alleged that America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was financing the United Labour Congress of Nigeria (ULCN) and that the Russian Committee for State Security, known as KGB, was funding the Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC).
Two months later, based on that allegation, the military government instituted the Justice Adebiyi Commission of Inquiry into the activities of the Nigerian Trade Union Movement. Members of the commission sat from February to August 1976. From the findings of that commission, 11 trade union leaders, including Comrade Michael Imodu, Wahab Goodluck, Tunde Orotunde, were banned from trade unionism for life. The military government never thought that various trade unions could unite to form one body like the NLC; therefore, they did not recognise it. They had what they called limited intervention in the trade union movement, which led to what they called restructuring. In this case, more than 1,000 registered trade unions were restructured into 42.
On February 28, 1978, the 42 industrial unions held a conference in Ibadan and elected me as the pioneer president of the NLC.
Why did the first NLC collapse?
It was because its leadership quarrelled over the issue of international affiliation. At that time, there were international trade union organisations like the World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU) and the International Confederation of Free Trade Union. The affiliates of the NLC disagreed on which of them to affiliate to. That was what caused the collapse of the NLC in 1950.
What were the major challenges you faced as the pioneer president of the NLC?
At that time, the public perception of trade union leaders was that they were never-do-well rabble rousers who were just there to terrorise employers. So there was a bad image for trade unionism. We, therefore, decided to prove that trade unionists were respectable people. We started from our secretariat. The people we recruited in the secretariat were all graduates. For instance, the founding general secretary, Aliyu Musa Dangiwa, had a master’s degree in Public Administration and was a lecturer in the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. The first deputy general secretary, Dr Lasisi Osunde, had a PhD in Economics and was a lecturer in the University of Lagos. The assistant general secretary, education, Dr. E.O Taiwo, also had a PhD in Education from the US.
So, we were able to banish the bad public perception and brought respectability back to the trade union movement. Union leaders eventually gained respect, to the extent that as the president of the NLC, I was asked to deliver a paper at the Nigeria Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Jos, on March 8, 1980, on the Role of Nigerian Workers in Socio-economic Development. One of the participants was the late Ambassador Enahoro, former Nigerian ambassador to France.
We fought and won minimum wage by law for Nigerian workers in May 1981. We also fought for May Day to be recognised as workers’ day and marked with public holiday.
Under the military regime, political parties were banned and it was the NLC that fought for workers and the entire citizens. We fought for independence and democracy. So there were lots of challenges.
What was your experience as the secretary-general of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity?
When my tenure expired in the NLC in February 1984 and I was about to go back to the Federal Ministry of Works, my union, Civil Service Technical Union of Nigeria said I should not go back so that I would not be victimised by those I had quarrel with on behalf of workers as NLC president. That was how they created the post of Director of Industrial Relations of the Civil Service Technical Union of Nigeria for me on level 16. I was working in that position from March 1, 1984 before I was elected the secretary-general of the OATUU on October 25, 1986. It had its headquarters in Accra, Ghana. I was re-elected six times as secretary-general of the union. I spent 26 years leading the entire African workforce. So I was exposed to trade union problems at the pan-African level.
I attended summits of heads of states and the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the African Union (AU) from December 1986 to December, 2012. This exposed me to a lot of pan-African issues. I took part in some of the socio-economic initiatives in Africa. For example, from my experience on the International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programme, we were able to organise a pan-African trade union opposition to the programme, to the extent that no African trade union organisation accepted it throughout my tenure because of the massive education we gave to African union leaders on its dangers. I also had input in the development of the African Alternative Framework to the Structural Adjustment Programme for Socio-economic Development and Transformation in Africa.
How do you see the NLC at 40?
Forty years are like yesterday. Thank God that one is still alive. Some of our colleagues have died. May their souls rest in peace! For those of us still alive, we are proud. When military dictators banned political parties, it was the NLC that fought for workers, the people, national unity and democracy.
When Comrade Wahab Goodluck, the general-secretary of my union said politicians and the military had failed Nigerians, he was arrested. And he spent 9 months in detention for that statement alone. You can imagine where we are coming from.
So we are proud of what the NLC has done, not only for workers but also Nigerians. We have defended national interest and trade union rights. We also played a major role in bringing democracy back to Nigeria. The NLC has played such a role that no other organisation can claim to have done better than us. I am very proud of that fact. That is one of the things that give me joy. When we started 40 years ago, we didn’t know that it was going to be like this, but we were convinced of what we were doing. We were convinced that it was a national patriotic duty. The role workers played in bringing independence was more than the role played by politicians. The longest general strike in Nigeria that lasted 45 days in 1945, which they called Cost of Living Alliance (COLA) strike, led by Comrade Michael Imodu, and the coal miners massacre of 1949, galvanised the Nigerian politicians to rally round workers to call for Nigeria’s independence.
In 1947, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), the first political party in Nigeria, was on a tour of the whole country and Michael Imodu joined Herbart Macaulay to mobilise Nigerians from all parts of the country to call for independence. So the role of the labour movement in the fight for the independence of Nigeria was key. At that time, political parties were not strong enough, so they needed the trade unions to fight the British in the agitation for independence. It is a legacy we are proud of. However, it is painful that Nigerian politicians have not given the right recognition to the role Nigerian workers and trade unions played in the struggle for independence and democracy. There should have been a national monument named after people like Imodu. But in Nigeria, we don’t celebrate our heroes; people don’t have the real sense of history here. Here was a man who led the longest nationwide strike that led to the agitation for independence and its eventual success. This man should be celebrated by everybody in Nigeria.
Most people don’t know the struggle of trade unionists; hence they look down on workers and trade unionists. That is why I appreciate Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola for naming a dual carriage road after the workers. That is the kind of things workers would appreciate. We are not asking for anything. We just want justice for everybody. There should be no tribalism. In the trade union movement, there is no nepotism, and that is what we want for Nigeria. Your upward mobility should not depend on whose son you are or who you know in this country. It should depend on merit and justice. I’m from Osogbo and I was elected president of the NLC 40 years ago because there was no tribalism and nepotism. That is why we chose, “NLC Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, National Unity and Social Justice as the theme of the 40th anniversary. We are concerned about social justice.
How did y the NLC get the Shagari administration to increase the minimun?
It was a collective effort by all of us in the NLC. We had a chatter of demands in which we itemised this. We wanted to alleviate the suffering of the Nigerian workers, so we planned ways and means of achieving those objectives. The demands were presented to the National Executive Council of the NLC, comprising elected officers – presidents and general secretaries of the 42 affiliates. There were debates and subsequent adoptions, and we started the struggle.
We presented the demands to the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Labour. We stated that in view of the cost of living becoming very high and the difficulties experienced by workers in the country, as well as other issues, it was time to demand for a minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
We asked the Federal Government to meet and discuss with us, but they didn’t. We told them to constitute a committee to look at our demands, but they did not yield; then we threatened to call a nationwide strike. The strike was to take place on May 11, 1981. On the eve of that strike, President Shagari sent for me. My first deputy, Ali Chiroma, was in Maiduguri and could not join me, so, I went there with my second deputy, Comrade John Ena Dubre. I didn’t want to go there alone so that some people would not say I went there to collect money from the president. I also took my twin brother, Hussain Sunmonu, an engineer, along, even though he was not part of the NLC.
We first went to Alhaji Shehu Musa’s house, the then Secretary to the Federal Government, where we dropped our car. From there, Musa drove three of us to the seat of power.
When we met President Shagari, he said I should call off the strike and I said no. I told him to let us start negotiation on May 12, 1981. I told him that highest level of both the Executive and the Legislature must be on the negotiation table.
The former vice president, the late Alex Ekwueme, led the government side for the negotiation. We insisted that the then Senate President Joseph Wayas, leader of the Senate, Chief Olusola Saraki, the father of the current Senate President Bukola Saraki; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Edwin Ume- Ezeoke, and the leader of the House of Representatives, Yinusa Kaltungo, must be part of the negotiation. The minister of labour, permanent secretary and directors from the ministry, were there. On our side, I led the team comprising people like Comrade Ali Musa Dangiwa, founding general secretary, Comrade Ero Philip, the pioneer national treasurer, Alhaji Haruna Popoola Adebola and Comrade S.O. Z Ejiofor.
We started the negotiation and reached an agreement. We won N125 minimum wage, N15 rent allowance and N10 transport allowance. When added up, it was N150. Immediately we finished signing the agreement, we went straight to the NLC secretariat at Olajuwon Street, Yaba, Lagos State, where we met the National Executive Council and briefed them. Then we called of the strike.
We eventually won a minimum wage for the workers and that was it.
Recent development have created a feeling that the NLC are no longer as strong as it used to be. Why is it so?
I cannot agree with you that the NLC is not strong now. The NLC remains very strong.
It is a very strong force in Africa and the international level. The NLC is about the largest trade union centre in Africa. In the Organisation of Trade Union of West Africa (OTUWA), encompassing the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member states, the current secretary-general there, Comrade John Odah, is from the NLC. We were able to get the OTUWA headquarters transferred to Nigeria from Abidjan. At the continental level, there are NLC comrades. At the international trade union level, there are a number of NLC officials who are holding trade union positions, such as Wabba and Isa Aremu.
How was May 1 declared worker’s day?
May Day is being celebrated as workers day all over the world. It was not declared a public holiday until we fought for it. We started in 1979, but it was not widespread across the country. In 1980, out of 19 states that time, only Kaduna and Kano under governors Balarabe Musa and Abubakar Rimi declared it as a public holiday. In 1981, all the so-called progressive states forced the Federal Government to declare it as a public holiday. That was how the President Shagari government declared May 1 as a national public holiday.
What happened between you and David Ojeli?
Ojeli was my deputy in the NLC from 1978 to 1981. He was the founding president of the Nigeria Civil Service Union. What happened was that at that time, we had a three-year mandate. In February 1981, the 1st triennial delegate conference took place in Kano. Because of the adjudged good performance of our team, the workers were ready to re-elect all of us unopposed. But Ojeli contested against me for the post of the president and he lost. So he was no longer a deputy president, but he remained a member of the National Executive Council of the NLC because he was still the president of the Nigeria Civil Service Union. So, some people who were not happy that Ojeli lost called themselves democrats and wanted to cause division, but we contained it through dialogue and did not allow the situation to escalate.
The NLC is highly factionalised; what is your take on that?
You are referring to the Ajaero faction. I was at that NLC congress. We, the veterans of the NLC are monitoring what is happening. Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, former governor of Edo State, was there; Olu Ero Philips, the founding treasurer of the NLC, who is 87 years old, was there, and many others. We saw what happened.
We are advising our younger colleagues and mediating. We know what led to that crisis and we are playing our roles as elders. When the chaos started and they were throwing chairs, we demanded to meet the National Administrative Council (NAC). That led to the calling of the Extraordinary National Delegate Conference about two years ago. We were also there at the International Conference Centre. They had an election and the counting took almost 36 hours. We asked one of the veterans, Aliyu Musa Dangiwa, the founding general secretary of the NLC to be at the sorting. When they counted the votes, Comrade Wabba won clearly. I was the one that swore them in. I swore the current leaders of the NLC in because we were part of the process. Ajaero and his group left for Lagos.
A seven-man reconciliation committee was set up and I was made the chairman, with Adams Oshiomhole as co-chairman when he was still governor of Edo State. We started our reconciliation and worked for 15 months.
Ajaero said he had a video of how the election was manipulated, but he didn’t present it throughout the 15 months. We asked him to produce the video, but he couldn’t. Despite that, we still made efforts to achieve the reconciliation. I told them that in any competition there must be a winner. I told them that the patient dog would eat the fattest bone. When we finished, the Ajaero group still insisted that another seven-man committee should be set up, three from his group and three from Wabba’s group and that I should be the chairman to determine the issue of the leadership of the 36 state councils of his group. We asked him to bring the report of the elections of his group in each of the 36 state councils and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He submitted a sheet of paper containing the names of his chairmen in the states without the details. Wabba’s group produced a voluminous report of the elections in the 36 states and the FCT, with all the necessary details, including the names of candidates who contested and the officers that conducted the elections and the scores of each candidate. It was clear that Ajaero’s group did not conduct any state council election. Ajaero then said I should lead a team comprising his group and that of Wabba to go to each of the six geopolitical zones of the country and invite all the elected officers of each state. Can you imagine? I said no. That was when I told Ajaero and Wabba to meet and consider what they could concede to each other in form of sharing of positions in the spirit of reconciliation. Before we knew it, we heard that he had registered the United Labour Congress of Nigeria.
I said that in accordance with the current labour laws in Nigeria, any minister of labour has no right to register any union in the name of any of the defunct national trade centres that have surrendered their certificate 40 years ago for the present NLC to emerge. It is not possible. It will amount to illegality. That is why it is not possible. So, it can never happen. I called Ajaero and advised him to be patient as a young man.
You see, the same thing could have happened to Adams Oshiomhole. In 1988, he wanted to contest for the position of the president of the NLC. He was deputy president then and he wanted to contest for the post of president against Pascal Bafyau. I called him and advised him to buy his time. That time, the Babangida government wanted to destroy the NLC, so he sponsored Takai Saman who was the president of the National Union of Electricity and Gas Workers. We worked for 10 months to reconcile the NLC that time. Takai contested and lost. Ali Chiroma won the election in the presence of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Trade Union Organisation and the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) in Benin. They used the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) to announce that Saman was the winner. I hope they (FRCN) are going to change their bad ways of those days. How could they announce Saman when Chiroma won even in the presence of the ILO and OATUU?
We spent 10 months on reconciliation. I was in Accra, Ghana and I was coming home for the reconciliation. I have been playing this role for a long time. We eventually told Saman and Chiroma to step down and they both complied. We are eternally grateful to them because they wanted the unity of the NLC. We felt it was better to have a weak united centre than strong multiple centres. This is because from unity we can gain strength. That was how Bafyau, who was a personal friend of Babangida became president of the NLC in 1988.
Adams Oshiomhole listened to me and he was able to spend 16 years in the leadership of the NLC. It’s the same thing Ajaero would have done. If Oshiomhole contested then, he would have lost and ended up in the National Union of Textile Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria. But he listened, and after his 16 years in the NLC, he became the governor of Edo State.
I wouldn’t have misled Ajaero. What do I have to gain? I have children who are as old as Ajaero, so I cannot mislead him; but he didn’t listen to advice. You don’t rush to leak a hot soup. Ajaero wanted to rush to leak a hot soup; he was not patient. He doesn’t listen.
The pretence by him and Igwe Achese, the president of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) does not mean anything to me. One of my former second deputy presidents was the founding president of the NUPENG. The founding president of Ajaero’s National Union of Electricity and Gas Workers (NUEG), Peter Olu Ero Philips, was our founding treasurer, and the 87-year-old man was one of the elders in our reconciliation team that worked for 15 months to reconcile Ajaero with Ayuba Wabba. Unfortunately, Ajaero did not listen to his founding president. He would not listen to anyone. When did he come to the trade union? He was secretary of NUEG and member of the National Executive Council of NLC before he was elected deputy president at the 2011 congress. He was not to be elected, actually.
I came all the way from Accra Ghana to Abuja because I was always invited to the NLC national delegate conferences.
What is the current status of the Ajaero group?
They are in limbo. They were invited to the 40th anniversary of the NLC, but they didn’t come. I was there. Ali Chiroma was there. Adams Oshiomhole and Omar who succeeded him, were also there. The 40th anniversary was well celebrated.
The Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola introduced the payment of half salaries for workers. With your wealth of experience, why did you support such policy?
We realised that workers’ salaries were their most fundamental right. You must not deny a worker his pay. But the situation in Osun required pragmatic leadership to handle. Before the economic meltdown, Governor Aregbesola was paying the 13th month salary to Osun workers. We had three options. You have to consider your options when you are a leader. You must consider the consequences of every action and go for the best. The NLC in Osun had the option to go on strike and paralyse the state, but what consequence would that have on the people and the workers themselves. The second option was that if the full salaries would be paid, government would be forced to sack some workers. We all know the unemployment situation in Nigeria. If the NLC went for the first option, Aregbesola would remain governor because you cannot depose him, but the people, including the workers would suffer. If the second option was taken, what would be the fate of those who would lose their jobs? Don’t forget that when you sack one worker, about 10 people will suffer for it because he has a family.
If you were the NLC chairman, would you take any of the two options above? The first and second options would not be tenable to any sincere labour leader or trade unionist. The third option was to consider the resources of the government and decide what could be done to accommodate everybody.
We did not want anybody to be sacked, so we said that workers from level 1 to 7 would be getting their full salaries while those from level 8 to 17 would earn half. When the government becomes buoyant they will take the arrears. The government was saving the money for those guys because they will surely take their arrears.
I told the governors that he must pay the money when the economy of the state improves. And we asked if the state would be able to pay full salaries if government’s internally generated revenue could go up to N5billion monthly. The governor said yes. But the internally generated revenue of the state has not come close to that since then.
When the governor got the Paris Club refund, he reviewed the pay of those on levels 8 to level 12. Therefore, only the very senior workers whose salaries are huge are taking half now, and they will surely get their arrears when the state becomes buoyant. That is still better than sacking half of the workforce in Osun.
