The Joint Drivers’ Welfare Association of Nigeria commenced its seven-day strike in Lagos State on Monday as it was unable to reach an agreement with the state government.
The group, in a statement by its lawyer, Ayo Ademiluyi, said it had been subjected to indiscriminate extortion and violent harassment by the management of parks and garages in the state.
We were joined LIVE by the Special Adviser to Lagos State Gov. on Transportation, Hon. Sola Giwa.
What are your views on the ongoing driver strike?
Section 40 of the constitution gives every Nigerian the right of association however, for you to be able to operate within a state, you have to follow the rules.
Lagos state has unions for the purpose of regulating and organizing them in terms of security and building for future purposes.
Lagos State recognizes the defunct NURT as the union that manages commuters’ transport in Lagos state. However, that has metamorphosed into what I called the Lagos state park administrator add-up community.
However, just like everyone we saw this advertorial going around on social media and we started digging to know who there were and we found out that we don’t even know them.
‘However as a responsible government, we approach them and we called them for a meeting, we want to know wtaht the issue is. It took us five days for us to be able to convince them to come and have a meeting with us.
On Thursday morning they said they were not going to come and then on Friday morning they switch off all their phones but luckily on Friday evening and we were able to convince them to come and they did come.
They laid down all their complaints of harassment, extorting and so many checkpoints and the rest. Of course, the government is not unaware of all these things.
They also named military officials and police officials and we were like fine, we are going to sit down and speak with all these people you have mentioned to iron these out.
We all agreed as gentlemen to meet the next day to discuss further and they agreed they were going to suspend their planned strike however, they did a multifaceted and on Monday we niow called them and was like we realized some of your drivers are not at work and we had an agreement that they would suspend the strike and they said their lawyers advise them to go ahead to court and there were going to sue us.
The way we are seeing it is that if this is not political why not wait two extra days? So we are seeing the political angle of this that this as this is an election period and a lot of [eopek will do a lot of this.
In fact, I dint want to mention we have seen a gubernatorial candidate making a statement from this. Us, we work for the people of Lagos and Lagios and we do not want the people of Lagos to suffer.
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