Strike: Labour threatens shut down of power station nationwide from Thursday

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday vowed to escalate the current black out in Kaduna state to all parts of Nigeria should the Governors Forum failed to call Governor Nasir El-Rufai to order in the ongoing labour strike in Kaduna.
This is even as the peaceful rally commenced by the NLC and all its affiliates on Monday in support of the total shut down of facilities and economy in the state was disrupted by thugs supposed to have been sponsored by the El-Rufai led government.
The governor who earlier in the morning on his Twitter handle had twitted “Ayuba Wabba & others of @NLCHeadquarters declared wanted for economic sabotage & attacks on public infrastructure under Miscellaneous Offences Act. 
“Anyone that knows where he is hiding should send a message to @MOJKaduna. KDSG. There will be a handsome reward!”, was sighted around the NEPA junction with his convoy where the NLC had gathered for the day rally.
Information gathered revealed that the governor had come to the NEPA office
to energize the electricity by himself, but failed and barely after 20 minutes that he left, the thugs who came in two buses started throwing stones on the workers around 12.05p.m.
Some workers who tried to confront the thugs while throwing stones were stopped by the Labour leaders, while the
detachment of security men, police, civil defence, military men, and the Road Safety,  who were on ground approached the thugs and tried to persuade and appeal to them to leave the venue.
Unyielding, the defiant thugs started throwing stones, and attempt by the police to disperse them with teargas was initially unsuccessful as their actions disrupted the rally before the thugs were finally dispersed by the workers themselves, without any casualty.
Speaking at the rally, Deputy President of NLC and General Secretary of Nigeria Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), Joe Ajaero, said the power blackout would go national from Thursday, if the situation remains the same and EL-Rufai refused to do the needful.
“The NLC had warned earlier that if after the five day warning strike, the state governor failed to address the issues, workers across the country would join in solidarity and commence a nationwide strike.
“They said we are declared wanted and we are in the streets of Kaduna. Let me make this clear, there is division of power – the executive, the judiciary and the legislator,” he said.
According to Ajaero, no executive governor can declare anybody wanted. He said, “The police can do that, the courts can give order. Any executive Governor that is announcing that doesn’t know his job. There is separation of powers between the three arms of Goverment so in furtherance to the illegality being perpetrated by El-Rufai, is the power of the police and the court to declare someone wanted . Now El-Rufai is an illegal Governor, all his action and pronouncement is embeded in illegality so we are here, the action is on, the strike is on rather than go into issue of negotiation he has resulted to harassment and intimidation. Last night he tried to use force to enter power installation to install power, let me say this under the constitution, section 1&2 made it clear the supremecy of the constitution.
“Section 40 gave us freedom of movement, freedom of association as well as freedom to protest and we are not going to violate any law . We are going to perform our trade unions function to the best of our knowledge. And for your information, Power is under the exclusive list, El-Rufai has no business to say anything about power , the state government is under concurrent list so everyone should mind his powers. Comrades, I want to urge all of you to stay firm because for some of us in the power sector if by tomorrow or next nothing happen we are ready to escalate it to the whole country, we want to send a massage to the chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) that if they don’t advice El-Rufai on this issue , they would feel also the power outage.”
The peaceful rally commenced as usual from the NLC state secretariat where the workers were earlier addressed by the NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, and passed through the secretariat through to the popular NEPA junction along Ahmadu Bello Way.
However, while the situation was brought under control, Wabba briefly addressed the workers to end the rally with a promise to use all Labour actions available to confront the state government.
Reacting to the development, Wabba said the congress was fully aware of the plan by the state governor to unleash thugs on them, and had as early as Tuesday morning shared the information and the clips of the plan with all the security agencies.
He pointed out that the military, SSS, Police, Civil Defence were all notified earlier and are aware of the plans, and he alleged that Gov. El-Rufai himself led the thugs.
The NLC President, who had been declared wanted by Gov. El-Rufai, regretted that the governor could resort to such a crude way of using thugs on peaceful protesters when he (El-Rufai) himself was a beneficiary of Labour and joined Labour rallies in the immediate past.
According to Wabba: “We said it in the morning. We mentioned the name of the person that was contracted. We mentioned the thugs that will be coming and I told all the security agencies, I called the DSS, I called the police, I told them that this is the credible information we have. We have the clips. This clip was trending since 6 a.m in the morning.
“They had the meeting in the night and we shared our intelligence with the police and the DSS. We were fully aware and that was why we informed the security agencies because it is the role of the security agencies to provide security cover for any protest.”
He added: “And you saw he was the person that led the thugs because he came and entered NEPA office (Kaduna Electric) before the thugs came. Our workers wanted to go but we said no. He led them before they came and tried to unleash mayhem, but we thank God that our people were also good in number and they were chased away.”
Meanwhile, the Kaduna metropolis are still deserted with businesses under lock and some citizens have expressed their full backings to the ongoing strike by labour in the state. 
An okada rider who spoke under anonymity lamented the sufferings of the citizens in the state due to what he called the bad policy of the government.
“Am forced to be doing this okada and now with the sack of the civil servants who are our major customers, how are we going to survive. I am in support of the ongoing strike and I want all residents of the state to come out to support labour in this battle,” he said.
In the same vein, another resident who though not a civil servant that came to the rally, said he was 101 percent in support of the industrial action, adding that it was an insensitive act on the part of the governor to sack teachers whom also have contributed to who he is today.