By Bimbola Oyesola, [email protected]
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) at the weekend reiterated that the quality of decisions that would be made by the Nigerian electorate in the 2023 general election would determine the destiny of the country in the years ahead.
This is even as it has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other stakeholders, including security agencies, to uphold the highest standards of professionalism to ensure free and fair elections.
“It must be one man, one woman, one vote,” the congress said.
The NLC said INEC must ensure that politicians play by the rules and that logistics hitches that dogged past elections are addressed in the 2023 polls. In addition, it said efforts must be made to ensure that the BVAS system is effectively deployed as the death knell to vote-buying and election rigging across Nigeria.
NLC president, Ayuba Wabba, in the congress’s New Year message noted that the most compelling significance of this national endeavour is that, “2023 puts our destiny in our own hands.”
Lamenting that most of the dysfunctional social and economic gaps highlighted in 2022 were still prevalent and continued to undermine the collective bid to achieve the dreams of the founders of the country, Wabba said it was pleasant news that 2023 would commence with Nigeria’s general election, which has been scheduled to take place on February 25, 2023, for the presidential and National Assembly elections and March 11, 2023, for governorship and state houses of assembly polls.
He said, “Amid the developmental concerns facing our dear motherland, 2023 invites the office of the citizen to exercise the power of the ballot to address the distortions, dislocations and disappointments in governance at all levels in Nigeria.”
Wabba said many politicians have put themselves up on the platforms of their political parties as capable of addressing the myriads of challenges facing the country.
He stated that 2023 has delivered these politicians, political office-seeking candidates and their parties into the hands of ordinary voters to decide if they are deserving of public trust for the public offices they are aspiring to.
According to the NLC president, the great guide for voters, especially workers and ordinary Nigerians whose rights to meaningful existence have been undermined by predatory politics and predator politicians, is to hold on to the rails of issues-based politics.
He said, “Our history has proven again and again that ethnic and religious inclinations have offered very little value and sustainable solutions to our persisting problems of stunted national development; 2023 offers us a unique opportunity to rise above primordial interests and take the destiny of Nigeria into our own hands by electing women and men of character, conscience and capacity to address the mounting crises of underdevelopment afflicting the country.
“Sector-by-sector developmental analysis reveals the reason citizens must not trivialize and jeopardize the great ticket offered by the 2023 general election to put our country on a stable track of sustainable development, good governance and inclusive socio-economic growth.”
Analysing the challenges in the health sector, among others, Wabba said Nigeria currently posts very scary records: “The 2021 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) undertaken by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), with technical support by the United Nations Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and their partners, reveals acute shortage of primary health care (PHC) facilities all over the country.”
In a related media audit of PHCs across the country, the NLC president said it was established that only 6,000 out of 30,000 PHCs in Nigeria are functional, marking 80 per cent dysfunctionality in the primary health services.
He added that the status of healthcare delivery at the secondary and tertiary levels are also nothing to write home about as many public secondary healthcare facilities in Nigeria have degenerated to mere consulting centres starved of adequate human resources for health.
The problem, he said, could be traced to poor budgetary allocation, which is dismal and fell short of the 15 per cent recommended by the 2021 Abuja Declaration and the tardy oversight by national and state legislature on released votes for the health sector.
Other problems highlighted by the NLC leadership included rising insecurity, energy crisis, prolonged industrial action in the education sector, poor infrastructure and refusal of some state governors to pay minimum wage to their workers, among others.