STATEMENT at the Kickoff
1.
The Joint Action
Front (JAF) effective from today 27th March DECLARES its solidarity
with all categories of unemployed Nigerians (who are more than 50 million
across the country), the working and oppressed people of Nigerians to demand
the rights to jobs and employment opportunities for ALL Nigerians irrespective
of sex, ethnic or religious background.
2.
Our position in JAF on the tragic incident of the 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. All the Governments in the country are subscribed to the anti-poor
neo-liberal capitalist agenda, which
create the conditions for unemployment, closure of industries, dependence of
imported products including fuel, job insecurity, under-employment, cheap and
slave labour, casualisation, poor wages and anti-workers policies.
3.
For instance, the 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,
hence the increasing rate of the army of unemployed of about 2 million annually.
4.
JAF wish to state 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
5.
As we kickoff this
MASS RALLY at the Nigeria Civil Service Union Alausa-Ikeja, Lagos, we should
appeal to ALL Nigerians that this is a continuous exercise. 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 today 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. The kickoff is our CLARION CALL to Nigerians to arise to
the challenge of System Change; which to JAF means the socialist transformation
of the polity.
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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