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Labour leaders’ arrest: CNPP asks NASS to intervene The Conference of Nigeria Political Parties (CNPP) has demanded that security men who clamped down on labour officials at the National Assembly be reprimanded for constitutional breach and for denigrating the precincts of the legislature. Two officials of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Benson Upah and Mr Moses Umaru, were on Thursday arrested at the premises of the legislature by men of the State Security Services (SSS) for allegedly distributing publications calling on the lawmakers to reject President Olusegun Obasanjo’s plan to outlaw the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). CNPP, through its secre-tary general, Barrister Maxi Okwu, said in Abuja yest-erday that the arrest was an affront on the fundamental human rights of the labour officials, since they were canvassing their own views and therefore called for sanctions against the security men. “This brazen attack on the fundamental Section 39 of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, on the hallowed premises of the highest assembly point of the nation must not be swept under the carpet. “We therefore demand that the chief officer of the SSS and his men in the NASS must immediately be disciplined. Further, we demand the immediate release of the two NLC officers and a pu-blic apology offered to them from the headquarters of the SSS.” The NLC officials were at the National Assembly prem-ises to call for opposition against the president’s Trade Unions Act amendment Bill, which was introduced to the two chambers of the legislature earlier last week. CNPP expressed shock that Nigerians no longer had a right to express views con-trary to those of the government. “Only in Nigeria’s type of democracy do state security operatives get involved in purely democratic engagements, in most cases to intimidate or terrorise those canvassing or holding divergent views with the government of the day. “As we have persistently argued, what we have in place in Nigeria today is not a liberal democratic Federal Republic of Nigeria under a constitution, but a police state under civilian dictators where citizens’ rights are trampled upon with impunity,” the group said in a statement. TO NEXT NEWS PAGE...

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