Nigerian top labour leader held

2004-10-09 19:01

Abuja - Nigerian secret police detained the country's top trade union leader on Saturday, two days ahead of a threatened nationwide general strike against rising fuel prices.

"I was arrested this morning at Abuja airport by the SSS," Adams Oshiomhole, president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), said by mobile telephone. He was unable to give more details of the incident.

Seven hours after he was picked up there was confusion over Oshiomhole's whereabouts. Nigeria's information minister insisted he had been released, but the NLC said it had not been able to locate or contact him.

And the union umbrella body insisted that Monday's general strike would go ahead as planned.

"The NLC president was invited by the security services. They wanted to have a chat with him as part of their efforts to ensure that there's no break down of law and order on Monday," minister Chukwuemeka Chikelu said.

The minister said that Oshiomhole had been released shortly afterwards.

But the firebrand union leader's colleagues said they had had no news of his release since gun-toting plainclothes men had dragged him from the airport.

"Mr Oshiomhole was abducted by a team of operatives of the State Security Services numbering over 15, who overpowered him, wrestled him to the ground and bundled him into a standby Peugot 504 station wagon," a NLC statement said.

"Mr Oshiomhole's whereabouts still remain unknown while he has been dispossessed of his mobile 'phone, rendering him completely incommunicado," said the statement, signed by acting NLC general secretary Salihu Lukman.

The NLC's national mobilisation officer, Denja Yacqub, said Oshiomhole had been detained at the domestic wing of the terminal while waiting for a flight to Lagos, the country's commercial capital.

"We suspect his arrest is a means of intimidating us. His absence will not affect the strike. We will go ahead," he added.

Femi Falana, the chairman of the West African Bar Association and lawyer to both the NLC and NCP, alleged that Oshiomhole had been "beaten up" during his arrest and was now being held at an undisclosed location.

Held 'for no reason'

He added that the general secretary of the leftist and pro-strike National Conscience Party (NCP), Femi Aborisade, had also been detained after voluntarily accepting an invitation to meet the head of the SSS.

He said that Aborisade had been contacted by the SSS on Friday and invited to a meeting with the domestic security agency's director general. He flew from Lagos to Abuja and was picked up at the airport.

"For now he is being held for no reason whatsoever in Abuja," he said.

Again, Chikelu insisted that Aborisade had been swiftly released.

The NLC, which represents most of Nigeria's trade unions, is due to launch a general strike from Monday in protest against the latest in a series of increases in retail petrol and diesel prices.

- AFP