The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have called for the award of capital punishments on corrupt officials who loot public fund, stressing that such practice would aid in taming corruption in the country. They said that such punishments are already in practice in countries like India and China.
They gave the advice at a joint news conference in Abuja on Tuesday. Speaking to newsmen, the NLC President, Mr. Ayuba Wabba and the TUC President, Bobboi Kaigama said that the campaign against corruption spearheaded by the president must be intensified and sustained.
The duo also said that an organised labour would hold a mass rally on Thursday in Abuja as a way of garnering supports for the anti-corruption crusade of President Muhammadu Buhari.
“If such capital punishment can happen in China, India and South Africa, it can also happen in Nigeria; whatever measure that will address the issue of this mind-boggling corruption in the country, NLC will support it,’’ Wabba said.
Wabba said that corruption had badly damaged the core of the country’s national existence, adding that the political leadership of the country must act decisively in order to rid the country of corruption. “As organised labour, we firmly believe that the political leadership of our country must act decisively to get us out of the brink of disaster that greed and primitive accumulation through open looting of our commonwealth in the last six and more years, has brought us to.”
According to him, the NLC supports the establishment of anti-corruption courts to try corruption cases in the country, adding that most Nigerians have been deprived the standard quality of life due to massive corruption in the polity, adding that organised labour would no longer watch the culture of impunity.
The TUC president, Kaigama decried the situation where governors could not pay workers’ salary for months because of the high level of looting at the state and local government levels across the country. “We have not experienced non-payment of salary for eight months in the last 20years; this is sad and this is due to the massive corruption in the country,’’ he said.
He, therefore, called for the enactment of laws that would give new impetus to the fight against corruption, adding that all public officers must henceforth, declare their assets.
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