ONGOING STRIKE AND PROTESTS ARE LEGAL AND PATRIOTIC
BamideleAturu
The description of the ongoing nationwide strike organized by the labour movement and civil society organisations as illegal by the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and his threat to apply the so-called ‘no work, no pay’ principle have come to our notice. The statement credited to the Attorney General of the Federation is to say the very least misleading and mendacious.
First, the decision of the Federal Government of Nigeria to approach the National Industrial Court when it is not only aware of but has been appearing in a pending suit before the Federal High Court Abuja Division on the same subject of deregulation and which has been adjourned to the 2nd day of February 2012 constitutes an egregious affront to the rule of law and clear and present danger to constitutionalism and respect for the judiciary. That singular decision is capable of being interpreted as shopping for sweetheart judges, which is known by lawyers as forum shopping, a professional misconduct. The Federal Government is aware that there is a pending motion on notice against it not to deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry in the said case in respect of which it has filed its papers. But rather than allow the court to decide the case one way or the other it rushed to the National Industrial Court with an application to restrain the labour movement from protesting the inimical and wicked deregulation of the oil industry. The law is trite that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands. The Federal Government did not inform the Industrial Court of the pendency of the earlier suit and without doubt, that concealment soiled its hands and knocks off the substratum from the order it claims to have obtained. It is clear that if those judges had been told of the earlier suit that they would not have touched the new suit with a long pole; they would have resisted the very dangerous invitation to enter into the political arena with the labour movement and the Nigerian people. As it is now that court must begin to look for honourable means to disentangle itself from the political arena! The decision of the Federal Government to approach the Industrial Court in the circumstances is lawless, deplorable and indefensible.
Second, the order procured on behalf of the Attorney General was against the NLC and the TUC as artificial bodies. The leadership of these organisations was not made parties to the case. Worse still, the orders were not directed at agents, officers and privies of these organisations. The implication of these lapses in the prayers upon which the order of the National Industrial Court was based is that none of the officials of the two organisations and those they represent were restrained, in my view, from participating or organizing the ongoing strike. This flows from the legal principle that injunctive orders are made in personam(that is against the person) and not in rem. It is essentially futile legally speaking to restrain artificial entities like the NLC and the TUC without their human agents! For the purpose of argument, suppose there was a lawful order capable of being obeyed and it was disobeyed, who would be punished for the consequential contempt? In the circumstances, no human person is liable to be punished and that demonstrates the hollowness of the process.
The threat to apply the ‘no work, no pay’ principle in respect of the ongoing strike shows clearly that the Honourable Attorney General does not yet appreciate the enormity of the issues at stake. He and his government may yet discover that it is the same workers he is threatening that will decide that he does not have any work to do for them, that is, the people. The current strike is about sovereignty. It is therefore intriguing that that the government can be threatening the people who own the resources that it would not pay them for insisting that they have a say in the way they are governed. We are taking stock of unguarded statements such as the one credited to the Honourable Attorney General and hope that sooner than later he will be called to explain fully the rationale for his audacity. The government is deluding itself that the people will soon be tired. How mistaken they are!!
We are encouraged that no matter how the present strike and protests go, Nigeria has changed irreversibly. Irresponsive governance has now become history as people will resist graft and incompetence at all levels through mass action. For this democratic awakening we have ironically the irresponsive administration at the Federal level to thank. God bless Nigeria.
BamideleAturuEsq
Chairman
National Association of Labour Lawyers
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