The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), in collaboration with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), is developing a digital reporting platform that will enable workers to document and report violations of their rights in workplaces across Nigeria.
The initiative is designed to move workers beyond merely experiencing workplace abuses to systematically documenting violations, reporting them to relevant authorities and pursuing justice.
The disclosure was made on Thursday in Abuja at the opening of a two-day capacity-building workshop on human and trade union rights organised by the NLC with the support of FES and ITUC.
The workshop, themed “From Violations to Justice: Strengthening the Nigeria Labour Congress to Document, Resist and Combat Trade Union Rights Abuses in Nigeria,” is aimed at equipping workers and trade union representatives with practical skills to identify, document and report rights violations.
The proposed digital application, expected to be presented during the workshop, will give workers a way to report workplace abuses across the country and strengthen the NLC’s ability to track violations and support affected workers in seeking redress.
Speaking at the opening, NLC President, Comrade Joe Ajaero, represented by the Deputy NLC President and President of the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria (MHWUN), Dr Kabiru Ado Sani Minjibir, said the initiative had become necessary in view of persistent attacks on workers’ rights and trade union freedoms.
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Nigeria was ranked among the 10 worst countries in the world for workers’ rights in the 2025 ITUC Global Rights Index.
Ajaero said the situation required workers and trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms for documenting abuses rather than allowing violations to go unrecorded.
He said, “We must evolve new strategies, sharpen our tools of analysis, and strengthen our weapons of struggle. This is why this workshop is critical. It is designed to bridge the gaps in our capacity; to teach us how to systematically document violations using standardised tools.”
According to him, the proposed application would serve as a reporting mechanism through which workers could document and report rights abuses in workplaces across Nigeria.
“We must teach others how to recognise, document and report rights abuses in our workplaces,” he said.
Ajaero identified fair and equal pay, safe working conditions, freedom from discrimination and harassment, collective bargaining and unionisation as fundamental rights that must be protected.
He also raised concerns over alleged arbitrary arrests and imprisonment of labour leaders, violent crackdowns on protests, interference in trade union affairs and other violations of workers’ rights.
The NLC president disclosed that the Congress had recently taken some of its concerns to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva, particularly alleged violations of ILO Conventions 87 and 98, which protect freedom of association and the right to organise and collectively bargain.
He urged participants to use the knowledge acquired at the workshop to engage governments, lawmakers and the judiciary, while strengthening collaboration with civil society organisations and the media.
Also speaking, the Director of Standards, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Emmanuel Igbinosun, said workers and trade unions had a critical role to play in helping government identify and address violations in workplaces.
Igbinosun said government labour inspectors could not effectively monitor every workplace in the country, making workers’ timely reporting of abuses essential to enforcement.
He said, “In tripartism, we cannot do without one another. We need each other to make tripartism work.”
According to him, workers who understood what constituted a violation could provide government with information that would enable it to take appropriate action.
“I can rely on your presence in that organisation to inform me of what is going on there, so I can take action,” he said.
In her remarks, Inviolata Chinyangarara, Senior Specialist for Workers’ Activities (ACTRAV), International Labour Organisation (ILO) Country Office in Abuja, said the workshop would strengthen participants’ understanding and practical application of international labour standards.
She stressed that the adoption or ratification of an international labour convention was not an end in itself, saying its real impact would be measured by the extent to which international standards were reflected in national laws and translated into better wages, working conditions and occupational safety and health.
Chinyangarara described workers’ organisations as important watchdogs in the protection of labour rights, urging them to ensure that violations were exposed, reported and addressed.
She challenged participants from different unions and states to become ambassadors of international labour standards by taking the knowledge acquired at the workshop back to workers in their respective sectors.
The Country and Resident Representative of FES in Nigeria, Lennart Oestergaard, said the organisation was supporting efforts to develop practical tools that would enable workers to move from simply witnessing rights violations to taking action and seeking justice.
Oestergaard said the need for stronger reporting and documentation mechanisms had become more urgent following Nigeria’s ranking among the 10 worst countries for workers’ rights by the ITUC.
He cited alleged arrests of union leaders, victimisation of workers for joining unions, violent disruption of strikes and protests, prolonged court cases and the erosion of workers’ wages by inflation among the challenges confronting workers.
He, however, stressed that violations of workers’ rights were not peculiar to Nigeria, noting that workers in other countries also faced similar challenges.
He said the objective was not to point fingers but to strengthen solidarity among workers and develop practical mechanisms for addressing violations wherever they occurred.
He assured that FES would continue supporting the NLC in building systems for documenting violations and ensuring that workers’ concerns received attention nationally and internationally.
The workshop brings together representatives of trade unions, the NLC, ITUC-Africa, ILO, FES and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, among other stakeholders.
Participants are expected to develop practical strategies for documenting workplace violations, engaging relevant institutions, strengthening trade union advocacy and deploying international labour standards in the pursuit of justice for affected workers.
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