Foreign Nigeria Airways workers accuse FG of discrimination

Shola Adekola, Lagos - 14.03.2008

Nigeria may soon incur the wrath of international labour law as 26 foreign ex- workers of the former Nigeria Airways Limited yesterday accused the Federal Government of discriminating against them by refusing to pay them even as their counterparts in Nigeria have been paid N26.9 billion.
The workers, who are nationals of Togo, Cameroun,

Gabon and Benin Republic, trooped to the presidential wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport alleging that Nigeria favoured Nigerians in the exercise by giving them priority while their case was not treated along with Nigerians.

Addressing reporters, leader of the group, Bareng John, explained that all of them worked for the former Nigerian carrier for upwards of about 25 years but had not received anything since the payment of severance benefits started in 2005.

According to the leader of the group, the injustice meted out to them negated the many years of their labour for the carrier.

Bareng, while lamenting how the Federal Government had refused to pay them their own entitlements since the payment of the former Nigeria Airways workers started last December, explained that some of them had to travel by road through the West Coast, even at the cost of being attacked by robbers on the highway to Lagos only to get to Nigeria to be neglected.