The Organised Labour has decried the worsening insecurity in the country, while calling on the Federal Government to overhaul the nation’s security system.
Mr Issa Aremu, the General Secretary, Textile Workers Union, said this in a statement issued to newsmen on Tuesday, in Abuja.
He said workers such as journalists, farmers and herders, were being killed mindlessly, adding that such killings were avoidable and must be stopped.
He said this, as a fallout of the killing of Precious Owolabi, a youth corps member that served with the Channels Television.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Owolabi died, following a gunshot wound he sustained at the scene of the clash between the police and protesting members of Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN) recently.
The Labour leader stated that insecurity related problems had wider negative impact, on human capital development if unchecked.
He said while significant progress had been made to train human resources in a number of educational institutions, Nigeria is depleting its skilled hands through violent conflicts.
Aremu said an enthusiastic energetic intern journalist like Owolabi, could be casually wasted in an avoidable conflict between the police and members of Shi’ite movement.
He added that it would take no fewer than 15 years and enormous resources to train a university graduate.
Aremu said that the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) had lost no fewer than hundreds of teachers, to incessant killings and abduction of school officials by armed bandits in Zamfara state, and other parts of the North east.
According to him, for a country in which millions of children are out of schools, serial murders of trained professionals like teachers and journalists like Owolabi will further deplete the country’s critical human capital, ” he noted.
The Labour leader noted that insecurity at work had been a daily tale of woes of majority of Nigerian workers, while calling on security forces and employers, to protect workers in the areas of conflicts including journalists.
According to him, notwithstanding the national hysteria about rampant kidnappings, armed robbery, rural banditry and terror attacks, the mass insecurity victims, are the poor defenseless working people.
“In most cases, mass victims are poor working people in the farms, traders in towns and teachers in schools, and now working journalists like Owolabi.
Aremu stated that security must be inclusive for all, noting that there should be a recognition of what he called “the class character” of violent conflicts.
He added that majority of the victims were the poor, who according to him are treated with indifference, compared to the alarm the insecurity of the rich and politically protected, generate in the media.
