Banks, others shut down as workers begin 2-day warning strike in Oyo

Customers depositing money in banks and patients to public hospitals were turned away on Tuesday in Oyo State as workers in the establishments complied with the two-days warning strike declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress.

Correspondents of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) who monitored the warning strike reports that branches of First Bank, Guarantee Trust Bank, Sterling bank and others banks within Ibadan metropolis had their gates closed to customers.

Also, it was observed that only few nurses were on duty to attend to emergency cases at the Adeoyo State Hospital and Oni and Sons Children’s hospital, both at Ring Road in Ibadan.

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

Speaking to NAN in a telephone interview, the Oyo State NLC Chairman, Kayode Martins, said that workers in the state complied with the directive of the national body of the union to commence two-day warning strike. Martins said that the union in the state has directed their members to stay at home and they have all complied.

He said that there would not be any street demonstration and that the protest was a “sit at home strike”.

“I have make 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” he said.

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

The National Coordinator, Federal Workers Forum, Andrew Emelieze, said that the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has given a directive that workers should go “on a 2-day warning strike.

“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,” he said.

Emelieeze said that in the past three months prices of petrol has been increased twice within the period.

“Yet salaries have been stagnant to the extent that workers are finding it difficult to survive.

“It is as a result of this hardship that workers decided to embark on the warning strike.

“This is to let government know that if federal workers should be crying like this what of those Nigerians that are not working.

“So we are insisting that the federal government should listen to the cry of labour, do the needful and make sure that workers demands are met,” he said.

The forum’s coordinator said that 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. NAN, however, reports that gates of the state secretariat were opened which enabled the workers to report at their respective duty posts.