NUBIFIE wants director of trade union services probed
Workers in the financial sector have urged the Presidency to institute a probe into an alleged ignoble role of the director of trade union services in the unconstitutional attempt to take over the affairs of the National Union of Banks, Insurance and financial Institutions (NUBIFIE).
National leadership of NUBIFIE, who addressed the press in Lagos, Wednesday, accused the director of trade union services, in the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Omoabie Udeme Akpan, of “lending herself to anti-labour forces bent on throwing the nation’s financial sector into chaos by causing crisis in the union.”
Danjuma Musa, president of NUBIFIE, flanked by other national officers and Muhammed Sheikh, the general secretary, alleged that since the successful delegates’ conference of the union held in Lagos on September 15, 2017, Akpan, for reasons not known to the union, had continued to threaten the elected national officers with sack, with the aim to constitute a caretaker committee to run the union.
The union leaders said they had received conflicting letters from the director, purportedly sacking duly elected officers of the union, and another letter in which she also ordered all appointed members of staff of NUBIFIE, across the country to proceed on compulsory leave.
Musa argued that if there were issues arising from the delegates’ conference, there were legal channels to address them, rather than resort to unconstitutional means by the Ministry of Labour.
“Assuming without conceding there were issues arising from the delegates conference, is there is no other ways of resolving it than the “supposed dissolution” of a validly elected national officers of the union?
“We see confusion and lack of understanding of the role of the ministry as exhibited by Akpan, and is most likely to undermine the confidence industrial unions have in the impartiality of the federal ministry of Labour and Employment.
“Whatever is the motive of Akpan cannot be in the interest of not out union but the labour movement in general. We therefore call on the presidency and the Head of Service of Federation, to call her to order so that she doesn’t throw the finance sector in to turmoil,” Musa warned.