NLC strike: Hospitals, banks, courts shut in Oyo

Customers depositing money in banks and patients to public hospitals in Oyo State were turned away on Tuesday, September 5, 2023, as workers in the establishments complied with the two-day warning strike declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

Some branches of First Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), Sterling Bank, and others in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, had their gates closed to customers.

It was gathered that only a few nurses were on duty to attend to emergency cases at some hospitals in the state.

The gates of the Oyo State High Court and Magistrates Court at Ring Road and Iyaganku areas of Ibadan were also shut to the public as well as the Federal High Court, Court of Appeal, and National Industrial Court.

Speaking, the NLC Chairman in Oyo State Kayode Martins, workers in the state complied with the directive of the national body of the union to commence a two-day warning strike.

Martins said the union in the state has directed their members to stay at home, noting that they have all complied.

He added that there would not be any street demonstrations by the workers.

“I have made calls this morning and I have been informed that our people have complied with the directive, so there will be no need going round to enforce compliance,” Martins told NAN.

At the federal secretariat complex, Ikolaba in Ibadan, the leaders of the Federal Workers Forum were seen manning the entrance, preventing a few workers who wanted to report for duty from gaining access into their offices.

The National Coordinator of the Federal Workers Forum, Andrew Emelieze, said the NLC had given a directive that workers should go “on a two-day warning strike”.

Emelieze added: “In that sense, we have decided that the federal secretariats across the country should be shut down because there’s no worker who is not affected by the current hardship.

“There’s no worker that is not going through suffering. Workers are feeling disappointed, feeling that they have been betrayed and cheated by the system.”

The forum’s coordinator said the federal government should expect further actions from Nigerian workers if it failed to respond to the workers’ demands in the next 14 to 21 days.

Meanwhile, the gates of the state secretariat were opened which enabled the workers to report at their respective duty posts.

The Star