Governor Makinde, why are you not disclosing the name of that company in Ibadan SW LG. where 30 workers contracted Covid-19?. There shouldn’t be any adoption of “Wuhan Methodology” of half disclosure in a season of pandemic. People deserve to know ALL.
There’s nothing confidential about public health emergency issues, you cannot sacrifice public interest for corporate’s profit or ownership identity’s interest. Doing so is a breach of your oath of office.
Disclose the company’s name now, no matter whose ox is gored or the ownership interest involved, to avoid rumour and panic.
As I write now, three names have been mentioned to me by three different people, yet unverified. Rumour causes panic and leads to further rumours because nature abhors vacuum. The right to know is fundamental, nothing should be hidden in government when dealing with the people particularly in matters that concern them directly.
Mr. Governor, disclose the company’s name officially now from the horse’s mouth so that people who had been to the company days ago and interacted with its workers and management staff can take immediate necessary actions and observe the covid-19 protocols.
Companies like Sumal and others in Oluyole industrial estate, Ibadan, like many in Nigeria, are mere slave camps of casual labour where rights of workers to dignity of labour, living wage, unionism, health and safety are sacrificed for maximum profit to the indigenous and foreign capitalist greedy owners.
This unending contest between maximum profit to the owners and the safety of life and economic well-being of workers was the main reason that Comrade Biodun Bamgboye aka Abbey Trotsky, Ag. National Chairman of Socialist Party of Nigeria, SPN, led others to address and struggle against.
For daring the owners to do the right thing for workers, Trotsky has been hounded, victimised and framed up with “orishirishi” charges by pro-Sumal police in their pliant court of law.
Even the state House of Assembly that showed initial courage to investigate the inhuman working condition and unsafe environment under which workers, mostly casual labour, worked, backed out.
If the House did not tactically back out, perhaps, SUMAL would have been the window to see the atrocies other companies in that slave zone committed daily against their workforce. And this coronavirus transmission freely in workplaces might have been avoided because it borders on safety and health of workers protocols.
