The Nigeria Employers Consultation Association (NECA) has refuted reports that it engaged thugs and hoodlums to dislodge members of the Comrade Joe Ajaero-led faction of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), who last Friday picketed its premises at the Central Business District of Alausa, Ikeja, disrupting its 59^th Annual General Meeting.

The faction claimed the Director-General of NECA, Segun Oshinowo, was presiding over an association, which members cutting across banks and other sectors of the economy, “take delight in sacking workers without recourse to extant labour laws.”

The event reportedly took a twist when suspected hired hoodlums later invaded the place and descended on the labour leaders, reporters and others, inflicting severe injuries on them.

Reacting to the ugly incident, Mr. Oshinowo, who described the action by the factional labour group as ‘criminal,’ said: “NECA is a law-abiding organisation that will not resort to lawlessness to dislodge lawlessness.”

In the reaction contained in a statement made available to News Express, and signed by the DG, NECA said it had “invited the Police and the DSS to protect us and our premises, when we got wind of the Joe Ajaero-faction’s plan to picket us.”

His words: “Our own investigation on the identity of those that came to dislodge Ajaero and his cohorts has revealed three possibilities, as follows: In-fighting among hoodlums and thugs hired by Ajaero over distribution of money paid them to carry out the illegal picket; another group of Ajaero’s hired hoodlums who felt left out of the largesse, after an initial mobilisation, and then decided to undermine the illegal picketing; a counter action by the legal and recognised NLC to stop Ajaero from further acting in the name of NLC and parading himself its president.”

NECA also posited that it would welcome the appropriate governmental authority to investigate the cause of this mayhem, “which, ordinarily would not have occurred if Ajaero has respected the industrial relations laws of Nigeria; and if the law enforcement agencies present in NECA have acted decisively by dispersing the picketers who were very unruly and, in fact, paralysed vehicular and human movement in the entire neighbourhood.

“We, again affirm that trade unionism and union immunity is not a licence for anyone to brazenly trample on the rights of other economic actors and breach public order,” Oshinowo said, adding: “In the light of the current decadent state of industrial relations practice in Nigeria as evidenced by the kind of action perpetrated against NECA by the Joe Ajaero’s illegal faction of the union, NECA would, once again, want to call on the Federal Government of Nigeria to, as a matter of urgency, summon a summit of the social partners for the purpose of setting in motion the much-needed reform of our industrial relations system.”

•Photo shows NECA DG Segun Oshinowo.