Union leader Aremu declares labour support for Buhari’s welfare programmes

Comrade Issa Aremu, the General Secretary of the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, has declared Labour’s support for President Muhammadu Buhari’s Conditional Cash Transfer and other welfare policies.

“I commend President Buhari for looking at the faces of absolutely 70 million poor Nigerians, who are living on less than a dollar per day and making them to access national resources as a matter of right, not of abuse as some corrupt politicians do on the eve of elections,” Aremu said.

The union leader, who revealed this during the 40th-day prayer for his late wife in Kaduna on Sunday, said and the workforce is ready to work with the office of the vice president coordinating the scheme.

“My wife would certainly have been excited to read that in this year’s budget, President Muhammadu Buhari has set aside some N500 billion as direct social transfers or conditional cash transfer programme for the poorest and most vulnerable,” he said. Urging the NLC and TUC to work with Buhari to accomplish this.

According to him, the conditional, legitimate transfers should serve as the basis for a national comprehensive social security programme for Nigeria. “As a worthy investment in our country’s human infrastructure, not stomach infrastructure, it is as important an investment as physical infrastructure,” he said.

Present at the occasion was the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, who led other labour leaders to the event.