Nigerian workers will soon hold nationwide peace rallies after ethnic bloodshed in Lagos in which more than 100 people died, a top labor leader said and national television reported at the weekend.
The president of the Nigerian Labor Congress, Adams Oshiomhole, said Saturday that the NLC will organize the peace and unity rallies in major cities to douse the embers of frequent ethnic and religious conflicts.
No date has been set yet for the start of the rallies, according to NTA television.
Four days of clashes last week between a militant Yoruba ethnic group, the Odua People's Congress (OPC), and ethnic Hausa originating from the north claimed more than 100 lives in the economic capital.
The deployment of armed riot police and military personnel, coupled with the imposition of a dusk-to-dawn curfew on the worst affected district, the Ajegunle slum, brought the situation under control.
The rallies are to remind workers that their interests can only be protected in an atmosphere of peace, Oshiomhole told journalists.
The labor leader also accusing the police of incompetence in handling the clashes, according to the Sunday Concord newspaper.
"The emergence of armed groups across the country is a clear manifestation of the incompetence and failure of the police to ensure the safety of lives and property of the citizenry.
"We continue to live with these armed groups whom the people have come to see as alternatives to the police," he said.
Lagos Governor Bola Tinubu said on Thursday that the police are under-funded and ill equipped to fight crime.
The OPC has assumed the role of fighting crime in recent months in several parts of Lagos and other states in southwest.
It has formed vigilante groups and inflicted summary judgment on suspected robbers and criminals to the applause of residents who have lost confidence in the police.
A magistrate's court Friday ordered Frederic Fasheun, the OPC's founder and leader, and 41 other suspected members of the group, to be remanded in custody after they were charged with murder, illegal possession of arms and arson.
They were taken to Ikoyi prison in central Lagos.
Oshiomhole also gave the state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation two weeks to restore normal fuel supplies to all parts of the country or face workers' wrath.
Abuja, the Nigerian capital, and many cities, especially in northern parts of the country, are suffering from fuel shortages.
The labor leader further ordered all workers in Nigeria to go on strike at the end of this month if their employers continued to deduct from their salaries levies for the National Housing Fund scheme.
He dubbed the government scheme, which aims to provide funds for workers planning to own their own houses, a "fraud" -- LAGOS (AFP)
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© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
