On That Botched NLC Election

Recent developments in Nigeria
Labour Congress (NLC), espe
cially the botched election of national officers of the body is, indeed, worrisome and condemnable.
Reports that delegates to the NLC election engaged themselves in a free-for-all fight during the election is to say the least, shameful. It is one disappointment that Nigerians will not forget in a hurry.
According to some delegates, the ballot booklet was manipulated and tailored to favour some contenders. The booklet contained more than one ballot for some candidates, a fraud that was detected in the middle of the election process.
The Tide hopes that the alleged  ballot manipulation issue was an honest mistake, and was never contemplated.  Even so, deliberate effort should be made to ascertain the cause and bring to book anyone found culpable to serve as a deterrent to others.
We think that the chairman of the Election Planning Committee and his members should be made to face a probe to ascertain their culpability or otherwise in that show of shame. The matter should not be treated as mere happenstance, and let people go away with this kind of crime.
The Tide reckons that the NLC has in the recent past been involved in monitoring and evaluating elections conducted by different Labour Unions as well as the National Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) for political office seekers in the country.
NLC must come back to that moral high ground that enabled it to be seen as the people’s conscience that persistently and consistently fought for the common good. The NLC should and must not be seen as having compromised its ground on corruption, fraud and other vices that it had stood against over the years.
Like the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA), we hope that the NLC will do everything humanly possible to bounce back and restore the pride of the Nigerian worker. This they must do by first conducting a fresh election that will correct the bad impression created by the last one which ran into a fiesco.
As officials of the National Administration Council of the congress meet to re-schedule the election, they must redeem their image by dealing with some of the major issues thrown up by the crisis at the last election.
Indeed, allegations of some NLC officers becoming jittery over the election can no longer be ignored because of the alleged failure of the out-going executive to account for about  N40 million meant for a housing programme for workers in Abuja.
As a body that had been so vocal over perceived mis-adventures in the Nigerian polity, these signs of decadence should never be allowed to fester in their ranks.
The NLC must act fast to regain her moral authority to speak for the masses and make the needed demands for workers. One group that must not be compromised in the polity is the organised labour which the NLC is one of the leading pillars.