Presidential candidate of the Labour Party Peter Obi yesterday said that he will galvanise the Nigerian labour force to move the country from its present status as a consuming nation to a producing nation.
He also added that no country can develop without a proper remuneration of its workers.
Obi stated this in Abuja during the 10th anniversary lecture in honour of the late Pascal Bafyau, the Nigeria Labour Congress’ third president.
He said, “I don’t need to tell you how bad things are in this country today, if you are on wages, today Nigerians spend 100 percent of their wages on just feeding, so many don’t even know where their next meal will come from. They pay to train their children only for them to finish school and stay at home without work.
“These are issues we need to discuss about, nobody can be president without sitting down with the labour organisation to decide the future of Nigeria.
“We can no longer have a situation where the leaders are here and workers are there.”
same table and talk. That is the beginning of the solution, that is what is happening all over the world.
“Nigeria is not a producing country, the collective effect of what we are suffering today is bad leadership, we have a leadership that concentrates on sharing, so you have to move from sharing formula to production formula”, he added.
He added that he is committed to moving Nigeria from a consumption nation to one that produces, adding that that cannot be possible without labour.
“Labour is the engine of production, capital and machines can do anything but labour is what makes it work. Because labour is the greatest contributor to production, it has to be properly remunerated.
“If you borrow for consumption, you are in problem but if you borrow for production, you will progress”, he said.
