The Nigeria organised labour and the civil society groups begin a peaceful protest nationwide rally yesterday in Lagos to protest against some government policies, which they describe as anti-people and inimical to the welfare of workers and Nigerians.

Among the issues in contention are: the National minimum wage, the propose deregulation of the petroleum products prices and the refusal of Federal Government to adopt, the full report of the Justice Muhammed Uwais Electoral Reform Committee.

Despite the several appeals by the Federal Government to labour to shelve the planned protest, labour, with its civil society group vowed yesterday that it would commence the rally in Lagos as planned and the peaceful protest rally was hold as planned.

The organised labour and the civil society groups also plan to held the rallies in other major state capital across the country, which include Asaba, Ibadan, Kano, Enugu, Maiduguri, Makurdi and the federal capital Abuja in June. President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, insisted that the NLC could not shelve the rallies at this stage because it was a resolution of the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting, and any decision to shelve it must be taken by the same NEC.

He also threatened that labour would commence a series of rallies to put pressure on government to reverse its planned deregulation of the oil sector, and demand a National Minimum Wage which had been put at N52,200 per month by organised labour to be implement by the Federal Government as soon as possible.

Omar also demanded for jobs creation, stimulus package and salary increase in response to the global economic crisis, end to privatisation and liberalisation, credible anti-corruption agenda, as well as fixing of the Nigerian refineries and the rail transport system in the country.

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) President General, Comrade Peter Esele said the National Minimum Wage should be treated with the urgency it deserved, adding, “the new national minimum wage of N52, 200 is a sure way of bailing out the economy as it would put more money into the economy, which would, no doubt, increase the purchasing power and demand for products and also give flip to the economy and generate a lot of activities.”

The IMF or was it world bank grossly misrepresented the economic forecast for UK a few weeks ago. Apparently things are not as gloomy as IMF forecast for Britain, the UK government protested and the IMF did their sums again and come up with a less gloomy prediction but it was still doom and gloom. The government did its own sum, came up with gloomy figures and predictions for the future but it say some green shoots of recovery in the horizon sometime in 2010.

All major financial institution have been coming up with forecast along the same like as the one made by the treasury in UK and the IMF, the latest organisation to weigh in is the European Commission. The commission predicted that the economy in Europe will contract by 4%, twice what it forested earlier this year. The worsening of the global financial crisis, dropping levels of world trade and continuing house value falls had prompted the downward revision of the fortunes of the citizens of EU.

Fingers crossed, lets hope there will be not more reviews later this year saying things are going to be even worst than the 4% contraction in economy.

One of the most worrying aspect of the predictions is the job lose implication. Unemployment in UK hit 2 million recently, additional one million people are expected to lose their job in the next 12 months taking the unemployement figure to 3 million.