The new Chairman of National Union of Road Transport Workers( NURTW) in Ogun State, Alhaji Mustapha Ismail (aka Yaro Ade) has lamented that the state secretariat has been looted following its closure during the prolonged leadership crisis of the union.
Ismail spoke on shortly after he led other executive members to take over the secretariat located at Asero, Abeokuta, barely three months after it was sealed by the police to forestall clash between the warring factions in the leadership tussle.
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The new chairman had in March secured a judgement of the National Industrial Court, declaring him as the duly elected Chairman of the union in the state.
Addressing newsmen after the taking over of the union’s secretariat, Ismail lamented that the office had been looted.
He said appropriate steps would be taken to retrieve the items, just as he sued for peace between the warring factions.
Ismail ruled out insinuations that his group was not in support of Governor Dapo Abiodun’s government, saying “we are not fighting government.”
He said “When we entered this Secretariat today (Friday) around 9 am, accompanied by police officers from headquarters we met the place looted. My believe is that the people that left this Secretariat helped us to keep our load, they didn’t steal it.
“Nobody can steal the union’s property, everything that is in the union’s office belongs to the union, as time goes on when we get to the bridge we know how to cross it.
“We still consider them as our members. What we did today is to unseal our office to begin our union activities in our Secretariat and for us to maintain our union in the state.
“Our union has rules, has procedures and we have organs….what we met here we are going to write our national headquarters and national headquarters knows the necessary steps to take about the issue.
“We don’t want to drag anybody to the police. We are still appealing to them to come back because we cannot do it alone.
“We are calling on them to come and join us, sooner or later we will soon resolve our internal crisis.
“The Secretariat was sealed in July 9. One of the reasons they sealed the Secretariat, according to the police was to avert crisis.”
Speaking on the union’s relationship with government, he said “People said we are fighting the government, we are not fighting the government.
“Our election came in December 12 in 2019, the other group took us to court. After many adjournments, we got a judgement in March 17, 2020 in our favour.
“After the judgement, we couldn’t implement it because of COVID-19 and shortly after that our Secretariat was sealed by the police.
“They said they had to seal our Secretariat because we were going to fight, we were going to cause crisis but we told them that we are not going to fight and we are not going to cause any crisis.”
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