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Nigeria Labor Organizations
Nigeria's labor force numbered about 50 million in
1990.
About 3.5 million wage earners belonged to forty-two
recognized
trade unions under the single national labor federation,
the
Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC). The Socialist Working
People's
Party reportedly had considerable influence in the NLC,
although
it was banned along with other parties in 1983. The police
prevented the inauguration of the Nigerian Socialist Party
in May
1989, citing the "general insecurity in the country."
Organized labor has been more a nuisance than a menace
to
national security. For example, a 1985 strike by public
health
doctors ended when the FMG arrested its leaders, outlawed
the
Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) and the National
Association
of Resident Doctors (NARD), dismissed sixty-four doctors
including officers of the NMA and the NARD, and imposed
financial
penalties on others. Likewise, when the NLC threatened a
twentyfour -hour general strike and demonstrations in June 1986
to
protest the May killing of more than a dozen Ahmadu Bello
University students by police, the police broke up NLC
meetings
and detained its leaders, and the FMG warned that any
strike
would be put down with "all the means at its disposal." In
May
1987, Babangida lifted the ten-year-old ban on Nigeria's
veteran
labor leader, Chief Michael Imoudu, and ten others, but in
late
1987, thirteen senior NLC officials were detained after
union
demonstrations, and in February the AFRC dissolved the NLC
executive. Serious industrial union demonstrations
occurred in
April 1988 to protest the government's austerity measures
under
the structural adjustment program (SAP), especially the
increase
in gasoline prices and the perceived excessive use of
force by
police in putting down a strike by students and workers in
Jos.
In December 1989, the government acceded to NLC demands
for a
negotiating forum to resolve a long-standing minimum-wage
dispute
after the union threatened to call a nationwide general
strike.
Academic unionists also clashed with the authorities on
several occasions in 1986 and 1988. The protests resulted
in 1988
in the detention of eight Academic Staff Union of
Universities
(ASUU) leaders. Finally, the government banned the ASUU
and its
intimidations were denounced by human rights monitoring
groups
and the Nigerian Bar Association. The ban was lifted in
August
1990.
Data as of June 1991
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