Nigeria's Labour Movement: Yesterday, Today and Generation Z
Insecurity and Poverty: The Bane of Decent Work
Nigeria's Labour Movement:
Yesterday, Today and Generation Z
By Dada, Olumuyiwa Olumide, LLB, ACIPM, HRPL
As Nigeria marks International Workers' Day, this year's theme, Insecurity and Poverty: The Bane
of Decent Work, speaks directly to the lived reality of millions of workers. It
identifies a troubling paradox at the heart of the country's political economy,
namely that employment no longer guarantees security, stability, or dignity.
For a growing number of Nigerians, work is not a pathway out of poverty; it is
simply a different way of enduring it. May Day 2025 is therefore not
ceremonial. It is an occasion for honest reckoning.
The National Bureau of Statistics reports that 93 per cent of
Nigeria's workers are in informal employment, without contracts, pensions, or
health coverage. Inflation, which exceeded 33 per cent in 2024, had already
eroded the purchasing power of workers before the new N70,000 minimum wage took
effect in July 2024. Workers are employed and yet poor. They are active and yet
insecure. This is the crisis confronting organised labour as it marks another
Workers' Day.
* * *
Roots in Resistance
The roots of organised labour in Nigeria lie in resistance to colonial
exploitation. Early unionism, formalised under the Trade Unions Ordinance of
1938, evolved into a vehicle for both economic demands and nationalist
agitation, linking the workers' struggle to the fight for self-determination.
Central to this founding history is Michael Athokhamien Imoudu, born
in Sabongida Ora, Edo State in 1902, whose leadership of railway workers
culminated in the landmark 1945 General Strike. That 45-day shutdown of the
colonial economy produced real gains: a 50 per cent increase in living
allowances and the removal of price controls on gari. Imoudu was banished by
colonial authorities, dismissed without a pension, and spent much of his long
life in financial hardship. He died in 2005 at 103, having given everything to
the working class. He remains Labour Leader Number One, not as a courtesy title
but as an earned truth.
Yet the success of 1945 extended beyond formal union structures.
Alimotu Pelewura mobilised market women to feed striking workers on credit.
Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti organised women to challenge broader systems of
political and economic domination. These contributions confirm that Nigerian
labour has always included informal and community actors, not merely wage
earners. The solidarity of women made formal victories possible.
* * *
Building the Movement
Following independence, the labour movement fragmented into rival
federations before the Trade Union Decree of 1978 consolidated it under the
Nigeria Labour Congress, with Hassan Sunmonu as a key founding figure. This
gave workers a single institutional voice capable of genuinely challenging the
state.
Frank Kokori demonstrated the depth of that power during the 1990s
when his leadership of the petroleum workers' union was central to resisting
Sani Abacha's military dictatorship. The 1994 oil workers' strike was one of
the most politically consequential industrial actions in Nigerian history.
Kokori paid for it with years of detention.
In the democratic era, Adams Oshiomhole, who had risen from Arewa
Textiles in Kaduna to study labour economics at Ruskin College, Oxford, served
as NLC President from 1999 to 2007. He led sustained strikes against fuel price
increases under President Obasanjo, negotiated wage improvements, and
represented African workers on the governing body of the International Labour
Organization. His tenure transformed the NLC into the most credible
institutional counterweight to government in the democratic era. Ayuba Wabba
and Joe Ajaero have since continued the tradition: Ajaero led the 2024 national
electricity blackout that shut airports and halted crude oil production in
pursuit of a living wage, and was subsequently arrested at Abuja airport and
charged with treason, the latest labour leader to discover that advocacy
invites persecution.
* * *
The Present Crisis
The twin challenges named in this year's theme are not abstract.
Physical insecurity across the North-East, North-West, and parts of the Middle
Belt has displaced workers and disrupted entire economic zones. For many
Nigerians, the greatest occupational hazard is not a factory accident but the
journey to work itself.
Economic insecurity compounds this. The ILO defines decent work as
fair income, safe conditions, social protection, and freedom of association. In
Nigeria, these conditions remain the exception. Even formally employed workers
endure delayed salaries, arbitrary dismissals, and wages gutted by inflation.
The N70,000 minimum wage, which translated to approximately $43 at the time of
signing, does not constitute a living wage by any credible measure of Nigeria's
cost of living. It is a floor set dangerously close to destitution.
* * *
Generation Z and the Gig Economy
For Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012 who are now
entering the workforce in large numbers, these realities are intensified by
structural changes in the nature of work. Young Nigerians increasingly operate
in the gig economy, driving for Uber and Bolt, delivering for Glovo,
freelancing on digital platforms, and taking on remote tasks for global clients.
These arrangements offer income but deliver no contracts, no pensions, and no
collective bargaining rights. The algorithmic employer does not negotiate; it
updates its terms and conditions unilaterally.
Despite this, young Nigerians have shown a clear capacity to organise.
The EndSARS protests of October 2020 were leaderless, digital, and nationally
disruptive, demonstrating that Generation Z can mobilise at scale. Nigerian
ride-hailing drivers have staged coordinated strikes against Uber and Bolt. The
Amalgamated Union of ride-share operators has affiliated with the International
Alliance of APP-Based Transport Workers, a cross-border gig worker coalition
from 23 countries. The instinct for solidarity has survived the shift from
factory to platform. Whether the NLC and TUC can adapt to extend meaningful
protection to this workforce is the defining institutional question of the
decade.
* * *
The Path Forward
Nigeria's National Employment Policy 2025, developed with the ILO,
acknowledges youth unemployment, informality, and regional inequality. It is a
necessary document. But policy documents do not enforce themselves. Section 17
of the Constitution already promises workers a reasonable living wage, safe
conditions, and social protection. Section 6(6)(c) renders those promises
non-justiciable, meaning no court can compel government to honour them. The
rights exist on paper; the obligation does not. Organised labour must continue
to challenge this constitutional evasion.
What this Workers' Day demands is resolve. Labour must press for the
timely review of the N70,000 minimum wage. It must champion social protection
for informal and gig workers. It must demand security sector reform so that
physical insecurity ceases to function as a tool of economic dispossession. And
it must build institutions flexible enough to organise a workforce that
Imoudu's generation could not have imagined.
* * *
What the long arc from the 1945 General Strike to the 2024 national
blackout reveals is a movement defined not by its victories alone but by its
refusal to accept defeat as permanent. The structural conditions that shaped
Nigeria's earliest labour struggles, inequality, exploitation, and weak
protections, have not disappeared. They have simply changed their address.
The forms of work evolve. The gig replaces the shift. The platform
replaces the factory floor. The need for organisation, representation, and
justice does not change. As long as workers are insecure, as long as employment
does not guarantee dignity, and as long as a person can work all day and still
be poor, the labour movement has not finished its task.
The picket line endures. It has simply moved online.
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