1. The Joint
Action Front (JAF) rose from its organised Mass Meeting held on Sunday, March
23rd attended by its affiliates, members of the unemployed
association of Nigeria and some civil society groups and reiterated its
Declaration of Thursday, March 27th as a National Day for MASS
RALLY AND National Mourning in solidarity with the more than 50 million
unemployed youth and graduates across the country.
2. JAF’s
position on the tragic incident of death of scores of applicants during the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) job
recruitment exercises of March 15th 2014 is that, Governments at all levels (FG, State &
local), irrespective of political parties, are culpable because
they failed to provide decent jobs
and enabling opportunities for gainful employments. They are all hooked to the anti-poor neo-liberal capitalist agenda.
For instance, privatization of electricity with the attendant outage and high
tariffs, and the outrageous taxes imposed by both state and local governments,
have made LIFE very difficult for artisans and small business owners and some
of them have been forced out of business. The same anti-poor agenda accounts for the ban of Okada/ Achaba by state
governments who do not create alternative decent jobs for the youths and
unemployed.
3. Equally, we wish to restate our position that it is possible to create massive jobs with living
wage for all Nigerians, given the fact that many critical sectors like
education, health care, agriculture, housing, infrastructure, etc are short of
adequate personnel and require massive expansion to meet the growing needs
of the population. The crisis of unemployment in Nigeria is such that the
decadent capitalist economic agenda of successive regimes cannot resolve. It is
only a socialist transformation of the Nigerian polity that can guarantee such
massive jobs and employment creating opportunities that would make it possible for
ALL Nigerians to have access to education, healthcare, housing, infrastructure,
industrialisation, energy, social welfare, etc
4. The MASS
RALLY, which kicks-off symbolically on Thursday, March 27th at the
Nigeria Civil Service Union Alausa-Ikeja, Lagos at 9am should be a continuous
exercise. It is our CLARION CALL to Nigerians to arise to the challenge of
System Change; which to JAF means the socialist transformation of the polity.
5. Therefore,
JAF calls on its Labour partners – Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union
Congress, the Unemployed and all pro-oppressed and working people groups across
the country to mobilise and organise MASS RALLIES effective from March 27th
kickoff to all the institutions of Governments at all levels (local, state and
FG), including the State Houses of Assembly to demand Decent Jobs with Living
Wage for All Unemployed Nigerians.
6. JAF wishes
to recommend to Nigerians an UNEMPLOYMENT CHARTER. We urge the working people,
oppressed classes, artisans, traders, professionals and all groups genuinely
committed to the socio-economic transformation of Nigeria to join forces with
the Unemployed to make the following Unemployment Charter of Demands:
·
Just compensation to the
families of all dead and injured applicants at the NIS interviews on March 15th; and Refund
of the N1,000 collected from all the applicants and compensation for expenses
incurred for the interviews.
·
Decent Work and Living
Wage for ALL.
·
Unemployment Benefits for ALL
Unemployed.
·
Reversal of the IMF and World Bank
policies of privatisation, deregulation, commercialisation, monetisation,
outsourcing, bail-out of collapsed private banks and interests with public
fund, foreign debt enslavement, etc.
·
Government should have business in
the socio-economic and welfare NEEDS of Nigerians.
·
Public ownership and democratic
control of the economy.
DARE TO STRUGGLE, DARE TO WIN!
FORWARD EVER, BACKWARD NEVER!!
Dr. Oladipo Fashina
Comrade Abiodun Aremu
JAF Chairperson
JAF Secretary
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