By Victor Ahiuma-Young
President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Joe Ajaero, has declared that arrests, intimidation and harassment would not deter the labour movement from its struggle for workers’ rights and economic justice in Nigeria.
Ajaero spoke yesterday in Oslo, Norway, while receiving the 2026 Arthur Svensson International Award, one of the world’s most prestigious labour movement honours.
He accused the Nigerian government of deploying fear, arrests, surveillance and other forms of intimidation to suppress organised labour and silence workers demanding better living conditions.
Ajaero also recounted what he described as years of persecution, including detention, repeated interrogations, surveillance, allegations of cybercrime and treason, as well as attacks on labour activities, insisting that the labour movement would continue its struggle until Nigerian workers were free from oppression and poverty.
He said: “I stand before you today not as a man, but as a symbol, a true symbol of millions of Nigerian workers who wake up every morning not just to the smell of tear gas, the sound of sirens, and the cold silence of a state that preys on its own people but who go to work hungry and come back hungrier, more emasculated than before they left for work.
“I receive this Arthur Svensson International Award not as a trophy, not as a ribbon to hang on a lapel. Not at all. I receive it as a weapon, a weapon forged in the memory of a great Norwegian militant, Arthur Svensson, a man who knew that trade union rights are human rights, and that international solidarity is the only shield against the whip of rampaging multinational capital.
“Let me sound it clearly and let it echo in every corner of this hall and across the boardrooms of the world: the ruling class does not give you freedom. You take it, bloody-knuckled, with your lungs full of tear gas and your heart full of rage.
“In Nigeria today, to defend a living wage is to become a target of the state. To demand that a worker should not die of hunger in a country swimming in crude oil is to be labelled an enemy of the state.
“I and my comrades have been arrested like common criminals. I have been dragged before state agencies for questioning on trumped-up charges; charges of terrorism financing, cybercrime, criminal conspiracy, subversion and treasonable felony. Me, a trade unionist, financing terror? No. The only terror we finance is the terror that grips the heart of every exploiter when workers unite.
“Our journey since 2023 has been harrowing; my home in Lagos was visited by an unknown fire which razed the building down with all my personal belongings. I was abducted, detained and brutalised by the government for insisting on the implementation of an agreement that protects the rights of workers.
“I was harassed and arrested while on my way to Britain to attend a TUC conference to stop me from telling the world what we were going through in Nigeria. I have been invited for questioning repeatedly and just a few weeks back, I was once again an unwilling guest of the nation’s secret police.
“I have been placed on constant surveillance, both physically and electronically, sometimes trailed by unknown vehicles whose motives were clearly not charitable.
“Our picket lines have been broken by security forces armed to the teeth. Our offices were raided on August 7, 2024, and a detachment of security personnel occupied our national secretariat, forcing staff members to evacuate.
“Our members have been sacked for demanding a minimum wage in the midst of hyperinflation. I have been detained illegally, questioned for hours and threatened in dark rooms, all because we refused to bow and refused to tell Nigerian workers that their suffering is normal.
“They have the jails, the guns and the instruments of fear. However, we have the power; the power to stop the world because we move the world. We create wealth. We are workers.
“Yet, here I stand, not because I am strong, but because the working class is invincible when it stands together. Every time they silence one voice, ten thousand rise. Every time they tear down a picket line, two more appear.’’
