Joe Ajaero is one of the figures of this era who evokes derision of disdain merely by looking at him. He is counting on our memory loss we forget that once he lost an election and stoked hell for the Nigeria Labour Congress. He pried the union into two and rode a faction. He is the sort of person who loves it only when he wins. That is how he defines legitimacy. He is reviving that infection as NLC president. A man who speaks without polish or tact, he did not hide the fact that he is a partisan of the Labour Party, and has not accepted that his candidate came third in the polls. Hence he has approached President Bola Tinubu with hostile levity. His first impulse is to strike. That is what I call an agbero mentality.
It is persons like him who made many in the 19th century Europe, especially socialists, to suspect labour’s foray into politics as a reincarnation of the master-servant relationship of capitalism. Hence socialists have had a fractious relationship with it. A historian called it the “contentious alliance.” That is the kind of attitude Ajaero’s NLC is perpetuating. How do you see strike as the first and last salvo to a two-month-old government. Why even the resort to apocalypse rather than engagement? When the issue of palliative was announced, NLC operatives wanted the money parceled through them. The government said no. They want the fuel subsidy regime to go the way of the past when labour leaders grew fat over the people’s miseries by cornering some juicy contracts. Not now, not for the boor of a leader named Ajaero.
NB: Sam Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation Newspaper
