Blame Government For Crisis in Edo NLC - Caretaker Committee Chairman As Labour Protests Against Insecurity

Igbafen (m) flanked by other NLC members 

Hendrix Oliomogbe 

The Caretaker Committee Chairman of the Edo State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Prof. Monday Igbafen has hinged the return of normalcy to the union on its depoliticization.

Prof. Igbafen, who spoke with journalists Wednesday in Benin City after a protest march against insecurity specifically appealed to the government to depoliticize the union in the state and so that it can operate independently for the wellbeing of workers.

Armed against the backdrop of workers with placards with different inscriptions, the Edo caretaker committee chairman noted that there wouldn't have been a division in the NLC if the state government  didn't back the rival union, which refused to participate in the protest..

He said: "The people that are grandstanding are not the problem of NLC please. The state government is the problem. Because it is the state that empowers those people to come and sealed off the secretariat of NLC.

"They actually don't have the capacity to do some of the things they are doing. if you remove the state. So, let's get it clearly.”

He urged the state government to collaborate with the credible NLC leaders in the state to depoliticize the state NLC.

Prof. Igbafen , the Benin Zonal coordinator of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) defended the protest march, which witnessed the participation of 17 affiliates of the union, insisting that Nigerians should be concerned about the state of insecurity in the country,

He added: "Today’s protest declared by the NLC across the country, as you are aware, is to condemn, in strong terms, the obviously humongous problem of insecurity of varied dimensions in our dear country. 

"There is little or no need to espouse arguments to buttress why everyone of us should and must be concerned about the state of security in our land as our mothers, fathers, children, students, teachers, lecturers, brothers, sisters, relatives, close friends, and, others have been victims of kidnapping, terrorism, and other ravaging forms of insecurity."

He continued: "Needless to add that the low, the high, the mighty, and the prominent amongst us, as well as local and international stakeholders in the Nigerian State, have expressed and continue to vent grave concern 

and anxiety over the steady degeneration of our country into a Hobbesean state of nature where the lives and properties of every citizen is brutish and unsecured."

Recalled that the NLC, at its December 4, 2025 National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Lagos had resolved to lend its voice to the growing local and international outcry against insecurity by declaring 17th of December 2025, as a day of national protest by Nigerian workers whose lives have remained on the edge not only by the debilitating wave of insecurity but also the suffocating consequences of neo-liberal policies of the Nigerian State.

Prof. Igbafen had harsh words for the black legs, noting that no progressives union movement will stand with arms akimbo and watch the degeneration of existential life such as the case in the country presently.