NLC Shelves Planned Strike Over Naira Scarcity By 2 Weeks

The leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has suspended its planned strike action over Naira scarcity by two weeks.

This, the Congress said, was to enable it monitor level of compliance by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Naira notes disbursement and availability to Nigerians.

The decision over the extension followed the receipt of reports by the Labour Centre from its monitoring teams across the 36 States and all the local government areas where the apex bank was rated on a pass mark on the level of compliance.

At a briefing in Abuja on Tuesday after the congress’ National Executive Meeting, the organised labour national president, Comrade Joseph Ajaero, told journalists that the problem of Naira notes has improved on the average level.

He said, “A day or two after we briefed you here the CBN deputy governors came here. And we had a fruitful meeting with them. And we gave them proposals on how best to solve the problem, Immediately after that they swung into action. And they have done averagely well.

“With reports coming from all the states of the Federation, and local governments on the level of compliance of banks, we’re happy to tell you that yes, there is compliance by CBN.

“After NEC meeting, we doubted the sustainability of that compliance and we don’t want to be calling you back after two days, to monitor this compliance for the next two weeks to see whether it is sustainable because they are forced to move money to commercial banks and some of those commercial banks are getting empty again, queues are returning in some of them, so it will be very naive for the congress to horribly call off the action, whereas we’re not shutting down tomorrow,” he added