Inundated with strike notices, President Bola Tinubu on Wednesday urged the various workers union to be patent with his administration as it is settling down to the business of governance after his inauguration on May 29.
Pleading for more time to look into their grievances, Tinubu urged the unions to shelve strikes for now.
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Tajudeen Abbas, disclosed the president’s position on Wednesday while speaking with State House correspondents.
Persecondnews reports that Abbas had led the leadership of the House to brief Tinubu on the outcome of their meeting with the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) which had served a notice to embark on strike from Wednesday night.
Quoting Tinubu, the Speaker said: “He said he is just coming on board and that we should beg them to please give him a little more time. The things that they mentioned, he is completely unaware of them and that he is yet to be briefed about all those issues.
“He also advised that we should channel some of those issues to the Chief of Staff to look at them one after the other.”
Expressing the hope that in the coming days that some concerted actions will be taken, the Abbas believed that the lawmakers had succeeded in persuading the union to shelve the planned strike.
On why they had to meet with the President over the matter, he said: “Sequel to the meeting we had with them, there were series of conditions that they gave that we felt we need to share with the president.”
On why they made a second visit in 24 hours to the State House, Abbas explained that today’s visit was a follow up to yesterday’s visit on the outcome of their engagement with the residents doctors and introduce the principal officers.
On the progress made so far, he said: Well, it is work in progress. I’m sure some of the issues that they have raised, if we can be able to meet some of their expectations halfway of which we are on it.
“We already set up an ad hoc committee chaired by the Majority Leader of the House to look at those issues. I’m sure with one or two interventions in their areas of concern, we will prevail on them to come back to the negotiating table and also accept to withdraw that strike notice.”
In the meantime, NLC President Joe Ajaero, has said there is no going back on the August 2 protest date if nothing is done to ameliorate the hardships of the people particularly the Nigerians workers over the subsidy removal.
Ajaero said: “Well the outcome is very brief. We met based on N520 increase and the committee that was set based on that and we agreed to work to realise the objectives that was set during the last meeting.
“We have made our positions known and are before Nigerians, the TUC, the NLC, our position is known and it is public knowledge.”
On his part, the Trade Union Congress President, Comrade Festus Osifo, said: We have had a meeting and the meeting majorly is to listen to the presentations that is coming from the Secretariat of the steering committee and they have made presentation to us and we made our robust inputs into it.
Some of the things they presented we did not agree with them. So the areas we did not agree, we also made our input known because when you come to such meeting it is for government or its representatives to do a presentation. It is left for us to either agree or disagree.
We gave them sufficient feedback and they also agreed to go and look at those feedbacks and get back to us on Friday.
What we want government to do is to address the plight of Nigerians. Nigerians are suffering, just as we said at our press conference few days ago that Nigerians are suffering, that things are hard, that things are difficult.
So all we are saying is that government must as a matter of urgency, because we don’t have that time anymore, roll out various programmes that will create alternative to PMS, and other palliatives.
“So these are the two focus, alternative to PMS, that is about the CNG and also the palliatives that must be brought out to ameliorate these sufferings Nigerians are passing through.”
The Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Olu Verheijen also said: “We have agreed to continue to make progress. It was a very productive meeting. The focus was really around how we fast track a lot of the interventions that will bring relief, particularly around CNG, mass transportation, cleaner energy, transportation, and reduce the impact of the cost of transportation.
We have made good progress and we are going to continue to do so so that we can start rolling out these opportunities and measures as quickly as possible.
“It’s important that we build trust and that most of the announcements and the plans that we roll out are credible and impactful.”
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