KADUNA— FORMER Minister of Special Duties, Alhaji Wada Nas, says that the Nigeria Labour Congress [NLC] does not deserve pity in its current face-off with President Olusegun Obasanjo. Nas said that although Obasanjo’s effort to break up the NLC was condemnable, it was wrong for Labour to have supported the president in 2003 when it was obvious that the presidential elections were massively rigged.
He spoke at a news conference in Kaduna yesterday. The former Minister also chided Professor Wole Soyinka for urging former military president, Ibrahim Babangida to apologise to Nigerians for annulling the June 12, 1993 presidential elections won by late Chief M.K.O. Abiola.
“How can Wole Soyinka ask Babangida to apologise to Nigerians for what happened in 1993. What did IBB do? What he did is insignificant compared to what President Obasanjo has been doing to Nigerians since 1999.
“Obasanjo should first apologise to Nigerians for doing more damage to democracy. Free and fair election is the backbone of any democratic institution.
Obasanjo rigged elections and Babangida cancelled elections. Which one is greater?.
“There is no security of lives and property. There is no law and order in Obasanjo’s government, so, why did Soyinka not ask Obasanjo to apologise first? It is because Obasanjo is his tribesman? Soyinka is a coward.
“On the plan by Obasanjo to destroy labour, I have no sympathy for labour. They supported Obasanjo when he [Obasanjo] rigged himself into office in 2003; they should have realized that he was preparing to become a full blown dictator”, he said.
Nas also said that the recent Federal Government’s directive that exporters of made in Nigeria textile materials would attract zero duties in the United States was nonsense because the same government introduced policies that led to the closure of most textile industries in the country.
“There is no textile materials to be exported as 70 percent of the industries have been closed down and thousands of their workers sacked. There is nothing in that policy. Where is the black oil which is a major raw material to be used?
“Ordinarily, this good news should gladden the hearts of our textile manufacturers and could be counted as one of the greatest achievements of the Obasanjo administration. Nigerian textiles are in great demand especially among the about 30 million African Americans, painfully as good as the news is, the opportunities have already been lost precisely because there are no longer textile materials to be exported having killed by the various economic policies of the administration”
Nas further said that the new textile policy would end up like the one for cassava which only helped to make the commodity which was one of the cheapest food items to become scarce and costly.
