Gatekeepers of Democracy defends NLC, saying workers’ rights and democracy are inseparable, urging continued activism against anti-democratic actions.
GATEKEKEEPERS OF DEMOCRACY (GOD)
PRESS RELEASE
14TH OF SEPTEMBER, 2025
WALE OJO-LANRE: A PAID AGENT’S TANTRUM CANNOT DIM THE LIGHT OF DEMOCRATIC STRUGGLE
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The desperate, poorly veiled attempt by one Wale Ojo-Lanre to cast aspersions on the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) for standing firm against the legislative tyranny of the Godswill Akpabio-led Senate is a classic testament to the bankruptcy of thought that defines the hired pens of the ruling elite. His piece, “Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan: NLC leadership should take its conscience to the mirror,” which we read in the Niche platform is not a critique; it is a sycophantic screed, a predictable regurgitation of the talking points handed to him by his paymasters in the Senate leadership and their Political Party which he serves unquestioningly.
Ojo-Lanre’s central thesis; that the NLC has abandoned the economic struggle of the working class for a “political” matter; is not just ignorant; it is a deliberate, bourgeois deception designed to fracture the solidarity of the oppressed. It exposes a fundamental, and perhaps willful, misunderstanding of the intrinsic link between the economic exploitation of the working class and the political superstructure that enables it.
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Let me make it very clear: the struggle for democracy is a workers’ struggle. To argue otherwise is to embrace a form of economic reductionism that has long been discredited. The capitalist ruling class maintains its power through two primary means: economic coercion (low wages, exploitative policies) and political hegemony (the control of state institutions to serve their interests). An attack on the democratic process, such as the illegal exclusion of a duly elected senator, is a direct attack on the tools the working class can use to fight its economic battles. A legislature that can arbitrarily suspend opposition voices is a legislature that will never pass a pro-worker minimum wage bill. A system that invalidates the votes of the people in Kogi Central is a system that will never be accountable for unpaid salaries and pension arrears. This present Senate as some of us have witnessed has amply demonstrated its indifference to the plight of Nigerian workers and masses. The political and the economic are two fronts in the same class war.
For years, I have followed the actions of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and organised Labour. Today, its voice rings louder, its activism sharper, and its positions on national issues clearer than ever. In recent days, we have seen this courage in action; from its pushback against PENCOM and NSITF to its open challenge of the Dangote Group. So, let us ask plainly: who says organised labour cannot speak out against the decay in our democracy? No one. Nothing. Labour carries the moral authority of the people. Only those who thrive in corruption and fear the disinfecting power of truth feel threatened when the NLC steps forward. When the truth takes the stage, lies tremble. When labour speaks, the nation listens and this is what they are afraid of.
Ojo-Lanre, in his characteristic style, offers no engagement with the substantive issues raised by the NLC: the blatant disregard for court orders, the subversion of the constitution, and the descent into legislative dictatorship. Instead, he resorts to the oldest trick in the book: name-calling and ad hominem attacks. This is the tactic of a man who has no factual or moral ground to stand on. He is a political lackey, and his outburst is a performance art piece commissioned by his patrons to create a smokescreen. One must wonder, how much was his real conscience sold for this time?
Where was this faux outrage from Ojo-Lanre when the NLC was on the streets facing batons, tear gas, and arrests for leading the struggle against the ruinous petrol price hike? He was silent. He was one of the voices cheering from the sidelines as the government unleashed violence on workers for demanding a living wage. He was a supporter of the brazen incompetence that led to the devaluation of the Naira, the imposition of crippling taxes, and the transfer of the nation’s wealth from the poor to the rich. His sudden concern for “workers’ exploitation” is as genuine as a One Naira Coin—a pathetic attempt to cloak his partisan agenda in the garb of proletarian concern.
The mandate of the trade unions is not narrow, nor is it confined to the shop floor. As was demonstrated clearly the Organised labour this year by celebrating May Day under the theme “Reclaiming the Civic Space in the midst of Economic Hardship,” they understood that a shrunken civic space and a threatened democracy are the primary conditions for intensified economic pillage. You cannot reclaim economic rights without first reclaiming political rights. The struggle for a national minimum wage and the struggle against an autocratic senate are two sides of the same coin; the coin of popular sovereignty that the ruling elite is desperate to steal from the people.
Ojo-Lanre asks why the NLC is not facing its mandate. Our answer as citizens; defending democracy is their mandate. The working class produces the wealth of every nation, and they have the greatest stake in how it is governed. They should not cede the political terrain to the likes of Akpabio and his hired propagandists. Their panic is evident. Why is Ojo-Lanre so terrified of the NLC speaking truth to power? Why does the truth about the Senate’s illegal actions unsettle him so? It is because he is a loyal servant to the anti-democratic project.
Perhaps, Lanre would have preferred that every Nigerian should have remained silent in the face of the escalating impunities across our governance institutions. That is the real motive behind his media trash; a nation of deaf and dumb individuals and organisations so that the forces of brigandage and crass governance reigns unchallenged as they continue in their blind rampaging and desecration of the hallowed grounds of our democratic institutions. We thank God for the NLC and its leadership for the efforts it has continued to make to expose the actions of anti-democratic forces within our nation. We urge them not to go into silence like others because that is what agents like Lanre would prefer. Please NLC continue speaking up – Yorubas would say; “soro soke”; Hausas will say, “Yi kara ta kara” while Igbos will say; “Kwusie ya ike” and we say in the streets; “Louder am”
Our consolation however is that we are sure that Nigerian masses and workers are not fooled. They know their friends and they know their enemies. They know the comrades who stand on the picket lines with them, and they know the paid agents who write polemics from the comfort of their Lagos offices in service of the oppressor. Wale Ojo-Lanre by his latest gambit has consistently placed himself in the camp of the latter; among the men and women of infamy who sell their pens to justify the suffering of the people.
Organised Labour should not bother itself with responding to these individuals who are obviously held down and blinded by the promise of what they will be appointed into if they behave well. We have appointed ourselves and we are many to seek out peddlers of falsehood in our media spaces and expose them for what they are; public enemies. The difference between us and these attack dogs of the ruling elite is that we are protectors of our hard-won democracy because we know the battles we have had to fight to get us here but they are gigolos peddling their wares in the media space. We will not ask for a penny but we are on the vanguard for protecting the remaining sane institutions in our nation which the Organised labour especially the NLC represents.
We urge the NLC not to be distracted by the farts of obvious hirelings like this but should continue to fight on all fronts for a living wage in the factories and for a living democracy in the National Assembly and everywhere. Your struggle should be holistic, and no amount of sponsored verbiage from the Ojo-Lanres of this world should stop the inevitable march of the people towards true liberation.
Umar Kaltungo (PhD)
NATIONAL CONVENER
