Minister of Labour and Employment Chris Ngige has assured the threat of protest by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) against the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over naira scarcity has been arrested.
The NLC gave the Federal Government a seven-day ultimatum to cause the CBN and the commercial banks to end the cash scarcity, failure of which it warned of a nationwide protest and the picketing of the apex bank’s branches.
But appearing on the weekly Ministerial Briefing organised by the Presidential Communication Team at the State House, Abuja, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Ngige said dialogues, coordinated by his ministry, took place making the CBN take steps to remedy the situation.
The Minister, who was accompanied by the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, and other senior officials of the Ministry, said as at the moment, the issue to be discussed by NLC in its National Executive Council meeting would no longer be issues of protest, which he said had already been apprehended.
“Now they have all answered our calls because we are the Chief Conciliators. In my opening remark, I said I’ve noticed that there’s already a dialogue going on and there’s also implementation and the Nigerian Labour Congress agreed that So that is it, the final decision will be done today by NEC and they will then do a resolution, of course, inform me and CBN what their resolution is. But like I said, we have apprehended and we are now conciliating,” he assured.