Nigeria: One Dead, Several Injured As Ajaokuta Steel Workers Protest

All Africa.com June 3, 2009

Ajaokuta (kogi) — ONE person was feared dead and several others
wounded, yesterday, in Ajaokuta when aggrieved workers of the
multi-billion Naira Ajaokuta Steel Company (ASCL) took to the major
road in a violent protest over non-payment of their outstanding wages.

The ASL workers protest is coming barely a month after members of
the House of Representatives Commitee on Steel undertook a working tour
to the complex.

The House committee led by its Chairman, Aminu Shagari, had appealed
to the protesting workers to "remain calm" as a memo, which contain
provision for the sum of N2.6 billion was already being forwarded to
the Presidency to upset the indebtedness to them.

However, the workers, under the aegis of Workers of the Nigerian
Iron and Steel Company, not satisfied with the assurances of the
committee chairman, yesterday mounted road block at the Ajaokuta
Expressway linking the state capital Lokoja to the earstern parts of
the country, disrupting vehicular movement.

An eyewitness account said the staffers, armed with placards bearing
inscriptions such as, FG Pay Us Our 10 Mon-ths Salaries and Other
Outstanding Arrears or Face the Consequences, stormed the
administrative office of the company but were resisted by a team of
policemen who shot sporadically into the air to scare them.

"Unfortunately, a stray bullet from one of these policemen hit one of them on the head," the eyewitness narrated.

The Police Public Realations Officer, Onum Inalegwu, an Assistant Superintendent of Police, confirmed the incidents.

Inalegwo described the barricading of the road by the protesting
workers as most cowardly, adding that the workers ought to have devised
a more civilized way of channeling their grievances instead of the way
they went about it.