12th August, 2011
Members of the Lagos Chapter of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), have lamented the excesses of its leadership of the union, urging it to desist from running the union like a family business.
The executive members of at least five major branches of the transport union in Lagos State, who joined in the cry for justice and urged the leaders to run it according to the dictates of its constitution, said they would no longer condone the bad leadership style of its top officers.
According to the executive members of Yaba, Mushin, Fadeyi, Ikotun and Lawanson branches of NURTW, who have now formed a coalition to fight bad governance in the union, most members have suffered serious setback in their businesses in the last three years due to the excesses of the leadership of the union.
In a joint press release signed by the coalition frontliners who claimed to be operating on condition of anonymity for fear of attack, the members accused their leaders of sacking most elected branch executive members and replacing them with their allies.
They also alleged that most of the people imposed on the branch union members were not bona fide members of the union but the leaders’ loyalists.
This, they added, had always been the cause of unresolved crisis in the union in Lagos State.
“There is mismanagement of capital in the union and this must stop. As registered and card-carrying members of NURTW, we cannot continue to serve people who are not our members. It is a case of monkey dey work, baboon dey chop. We have lamented, written petitions and even reported to our national leaders but there has been no solution yet,” the group claimed.
Urging the authorities of all financial crimes commissions in the state to investigate the money being remitted daily by administrators of the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) scheme operated by the NURTW, the group further alleged that the state leadership of the union has enriched itself with substantial amount of the money.
Meanwhile, findings revealed that due to the unresolved crises in the Lagos chapter of the union, the National Executive Council of the NURTW will dissolve the state excos and fix an election date for new administrators to pilot the affairs of the union later this month and according to the dictates of the union’s constitution.