If a labour leader has to make a choice between obeying the laws of the country and court orders on one hand, and defending the rights of workers on the other, can there be a democratic choice?
That was the question I set out to answer in Abuja on August 21, 2026 at the workshop themed “From Violations to Justice: Strengthening the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to Document, Resist and Combat Trade Union Rights Abuses in Nigeria.”
I presented three practical cases to make my point. The first was Union Bank of Nigeria. It had a crisis about 2009 resulting in a new management.
The new bank management violated Section 40 of the Constitution by banning the workers’ union, the Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions, ASSBIFI.
Also, it seized the union offices, stopped check-off deductions, and dismissed the national union president, Princewill Ojeh, plus a dozen other local labour leaders.
When the bank workers protested, their branch leaders were sent on punitive postings to other states.
To preempt the NLC, the management secured a court injunction barring it from engaging in any industrial action in the bank. It also got the Federal Ministry of Labour to stop the NLC from interfering in the bank’s labour disputes. To worsen matters, the second labour centre in the country, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, showed up at the Ministry to say the affected union was its affiliate and that the NLC was a meddlesome interloper in the case.
The bank also secured the services of armed policemen, contingents of hooded and armed State Security Services, SSS, agents, and soldiers.
But all these were in vain as the Congress relied on Section 42 of the Trade Union Act, which gave trade unions the power to picket any premises in furtherance of an industrial dispute.
The NLC decided to take on the bank in a unique way. It asked the staff not to embark on strike so none would be sacked or victimised. Rather, it ordered workers nationwide to go to all branches of the bank to open new accounts. With that, hundreds of workers converged on each branch of the bank nationwide. The bank branches could neither stop nor handle the large number of persons, and they began to shut down.
The bank sued for peace and rescinded all its anti-union decisions.
Airtel is the second biggest telecommunications company in the country. In 2011 it engaged in the mass retrenchment of staff and cut the salaries of those who survived the onslaught by as much as 70 percent. But the Indian-managed company did not cut the salaries of the Indian employees.
The workers were ununionized and the NLC decided to intervene. But Airtel rushed to secure a court injunction restraining the Congress from interfering. The NLC defied the injunction and organized a strike which cut millions of lines across the country. The Presidency complained that the cuts also affected its communication lines and demanded their restoration. The NLC ignored the request and rather increased the cuts. As its infrastructure collapsed, the Airtel management came to the Congress to meet the leadership, but was ignored and directed to meet middle-level Congress staff. Desperate to stop the strike, the management did so with a pledge to retrace its footsteps.
The trade unions are bound to obey the laws of the land. But sometimes, to get justice, they have to take the law into their own hands. This was the case of Dufil Prima Foods (Indomie) workers. They were almost all casual workers and were sacked and re-engaged biennially on average. This way, they had no continuous service, job security, nor pension system.
Some managers in the company also divided the job contracts among themselves, exploited and underpaid the workers. To worsen matters, the Food and Beverage union did not then cover the workers as they were considered outside the employment umbrella.
When the workers in Abuja were once again asked to resign and reapply for their jobs in 2011, they demanded to be paid off before reapplying. When this was refused, they drove over two dozen trucks loaded with the products they were supposed to distribute to the NLC premises and handed them over to the Congress.
The management immediately reported to the police that its trucks and goods had been stolen. The police deployed to the company premises and sent out men to apprehend the supposedly fleeing workers. The NLC contacted the Ministry of Labour to report the case and asked that the Ministry and NLC jointly meet the management and broker peace. But the Ministry said it was a criminal case and advised the NLC to hands off and allow the law to take its course.
Congress refused, and its secretariat leadership went to the company premises in Jabbi that was swarming with armed policemen. The police refused the NLC delegation entry, treating the premises as some crime scene and the “wanted” workers as fleeing suspects.
We challenged the police presence, pointing out that the premises was no police station and that the police had no right to intervene in an industrial dispute. The police backed down and the cocky management saw its defences crumble. We explained that the company had two options: either accept NLC conditions and get their trucks and goods released the next day, or insist on a punitive police case which would see its trucks and goods sit in the NLC premises for an indefinite period while lawyers tackled themselves. The management heeded and we presented our demands which included the payment of all allowances due over the years as if the workers never had broken services, payment of annual leave and leave allowances for the years each staff had worked, paid maternity leave for pregnant staff, a guarantee that all willing staff would be reabsorbed, and no staff would be victimized in any way, manner, or form.
The management agreed and we sat down with it to work out the entitlement of each staff. After the exercise, the management requested that the staff submit their bank account details for payment while its trucks were released. But we insisted the staff be paid across the table. The management said it was a crazy idea as it was dangerous to move so much cash from the bank to its premises. We told them that since they had brought so many armed policemen to the premises, they should use them as escorts. So, the cash was brought from the bank and all staff were paid in cash.
Traditionally, for labour leaders, when confronted with either defending workers’ rights or disobeying the laws and court orders, they prefer being sent to prison.
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