The Battle Within Nigeria’s Labour Movement and the Cost to the Nigerian Worker.
Nigerian workers have enough problems to contend with without having to worry about whether the organisations representing them can agree among themselves. The cost of living keeps rising, wages struggle to keep pace, working conditions remain difficult, and the ordinary employee is often left wondering how long a salary can stretch before the next payday. At such a time, the labour movement ought to be one of the strongest voices in the country. Yet the relationship between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) has repeatedly raised questions about the ability of organised labour to present a united front when workers need it most.
It is tempting to explain their differences as a consequence of leadership rivalry, personal ambition or a struggle for recognition. Such factors may sometimes contribute to the problem, but there is more to the story. The NLC and TUC did not emerge from exactly the same institutional experience. Their histories, membership traditions and approaches to labour representation have helped shape two organisations that share a common cause but do not always see the road to achieving it in the same way.
The history goes back to the restructuring of Nigeria’s trade union movement in the 1970s. In 1976, the military government established the Michael Abiodun Commission to rationalise a labour landscape crowded with hundreds of fragmented unions. Its recommendations led to the consolidation of industrial unions into 42 unions and the separation of senior staff associations from that structure. In 1978, the NLC emerged from the merger of four existing labour organisations. The senior staff associations, however, were left without a corresponding labour centre. Their need for a common platform led to the formation of the Federation of Senior Staff Associations of Nigeria (FESSAN) in 1980. It later became the Senior Staff Consultative Association of Nigeria (SESCAN), before the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria was registered as a labour centre on 8 August 2005.
This history matters because institutions develop habits from the circumstances in which they are born. The NLC grew out of a tradition of industrial organisation and mass mobilisation. Its strength has long been associated with the ability to bring workers together, withdraw their services and make government feel the economic consequences of ignoring their demands. The TUC developed from a different institutional constituency, with roots in senior staff associations and a tradition of professional representation. Its experience gave it a distinct place in the labour movement.
These differences should not be exaggerated. The NLC is not incapable of negotiation, and the TUC is not averse to confrontation. Both have mobilised workers, challenged government policies and participated in industrial action. Neither organisation has an exclusive claim to courage, wisdom or the ability to defend workers. But their different histories have helped shape their institutional instincts, and those instincts sometimes influence how they approach the same dispute.
In many respects, the NLC and TUC resemble siblings raised under the same roof but shaped by different experiences. They belong to the same family of organised labour, share a common responsibility to protect workers and confront many of the same economic challenges, yet they have developed different instincts about how that responsibility should be discharged. The older sibling, conscious of its historical prominence and numerical strength, is accustomed to leading from the front. The younger, with its own institutional identity and constituency, is equally unwilling to be treated as an appendage. That difference in temperament is not necessarily a problem. Families do not require their members to think alike. But when every disagreement becomes a contest over who should lead, whose voice should carry more weight, or who deserves greater recognition, the common purpose begins to suffer.
The distinction is important. The NLC’s historical prominence does not make the TUC an organisation expected to follow its lead in every circumstance. Equally, the TUC’s desire to protect its independence should not become an obstacle to collective action. Cooperation cannot mean that one organisation must surrender its identity to the other. It means recognising that both have a responsibility that is bigger than their institutional standing.
And that responsibility has very practical consequences. When labour centres disagree over strategy, the damage does not end in their meeting rooms. A divided negotiating position can weaken the pressure brought to bear on government. It can make it harder to sustain industrial action, confuse workers about the position of their representatives and give those being challenged more room to delay or negotiate around the demands. A government facing a united labour movement must contend with a common position. One facing competing voices has more room to manoeuvre.
Government does not need to create these divisions to benefit from them. It only needs to recognise the opportunities they present. When the organisations representing workers cannot sustain a common position, the government’s task becomes easier. It can engage one side while the other questions the process, appeal to differences in approach and allow time to weaken the pressure. The worker, who has no control over these institutional calculations, is left to bear the consequences.
There is evidence that the two centres understand the value of unity. On 2 October 2023, the NLC and TUC jointly signed a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Government after threatening an indefinite nationwide strike over the consequences of petrol subsidy removal. The agreement included a ₦35,000 wage award for federal workers and led to the suspension of the planned strike for 30 days. In June 2024, they again acted together, leading a nationwide strike over the minimum wage dispute and the electricity tariff increase. Their joint action disrupted essential services and brought the seriousness of their demands into sharp focus. These were not the actions of organisations incapable of working together. They demonstrated what organised labour can achieve when it finds common ground.
But unity should not be something that appears only when a strike is about to begin. Workers need it during negotiations, in the defence of collective agreements, in campaigns for better working conditions and in the ordinary business of holding government accountable. The cost of living does not wait for labour leaders to resolve their differences. Rent does not become cheaper because the NLC and TUC have failed to agree. Neither do transport fares, school fees, electricity bills or the price of food. These pressures affect workers across different professions and salary levels, even if they do not affect everyone in exactly the same way.
There is also a class dimension that should not be ignored. A junior industrial worker and a senior professional may occupy different positions within the workplace, earn different salaries and face different immediate concerns. Their experiences are not identical. Yet both depend on the value of their wages, the security of their employment and the conditions under which they work. The economic hardship confronting Nigerian workers cuts across these distinctions. Organised labour must therefore be careful not to allow differences in membership and institutional identity to obscure the interests that bring workers together in the first place.
The NLC and TUC have something valuable to offer one another. The NLC’s tradition of mass mobilisation and the TUC’s distinct professional and institutional reach can strengthen the labour movement when properly coordinated. There will be disagreements over tactics. There should be room for debate, criticism and independent judgement. But disagreement must not become a permanent condition of the relationship. The purpose of organised labour is not to preserve the importance of its leadership, it is to improve the lives of the people it represents.
The hammer and the scalpel are both valid tools in a protracted class struggle. Sometimes, the door is so firmly locked that only the hammer can break it open. At other times, the problem requires the careful hand of the surgeon. But imagine the carpenter and the surgeon arguing over whose instrument deserves greater respect while the patient lies unattended and the house burns down around them. The carpenter is swinging a hammer, the surgeon is reaching for a scalpel, the patient is waiting to be saved, and neither seems to notice that the building itself is disappearing in flames. There is something almost absurd about the spectacle, except that the consequences are borne by real people whose livelihoods depend on the institutions fighting over the tools.
The NLC and TUC do not have to become identical organisations to become effective partners. They do not have to abandon their histories, surrender their identities or pretend that their differences do not exist. They simply have to understand that their disagreements must never become more important than the workers whose interests they were established to defend.
At the end of the day, the authority of organised labour comes from the people it represents. It is borrowed from workers who pay their dues, withdraw their services, endure the consequences of industrial action and trust their leaders to negotiate on their behalf. That authority should not be squandered on institutional rivalry.
The Nigerian worker should not have to fight the government for a living wage and fight the labour movement for a united voice.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
08034861434
