Protesting workers of Sophia Nigeria Limited situated at No. 48, Iju Road, Ifako Agege, on Monday morning broke the head of Mr. Tanzan Tsaw, a Chief Superintendent of Police and the Divisional Police Officer (DPO) in charge of Pen Cinema Police station in Lagos State, southwest Nigeria.
Tsaw had gone to the company with his officers to maintain peace when the incident happened.
The workers were protesting the collection of bribes by some supervisors of the company.
The DPO was later taken for treatment.
The workers’ union treasurer, Comrade Olatoye Opeyemi told our correspondent on phone that the workers were protesting because the company sacked some of the workers and wants to employ new workers because they were demanding for a better working conditions and failed to meet set target.
The Operations Manager of the company, Mr. Monday Nnah, refuted Opeyemi’s claims, saying the issue of target was resolved in January 2015 after both the management and union representatives signed an agreement.
According to Mr. Nnah on Monday, 15 February, 2016 around 8 a.m. they heard a loud noise at the production hall and when they rushed down to know what was going on, they discovered that the union members had switched off the lights and when asked what happened, the union members said they were on strike because they were not given Christmas gifts, and some supervisors were asking for bribes and that the fact that they must meet the 27 percent production target given to them.
“I told them that all the workers have received their Christmas gifts including those who were on annual leave as soon as they resumed their gifts were given to them.
“I again asked them to tell me which of the supervisors was collecting money from them but they could not mention any name and on the issue of target I again told them that both the union and management agreed on the target percentage since January 2015. In fact, I asked them why they did not approach the management if they had genuine issue rather than shut down the company. Thereafter, we prevailed on them to go back to work while we arranged for a meeting. They refused all our plea.
“We then put a call across to both their state executives and national union president and we were told that they were not aware of the strike. In fact, one Comrade Andrew who came from their national office was surprised when he heard what the union was demanding.”
Speaking further Mr. Nnah said before Monday’s incident, several meetings had been held where both the state and national executives of the union were present.
He explained further that the workers went as far as damaging over 20 computers and other things and stole over N800,000 while protesting.
On the issue of collecting bribes by some supervisors as alleged by the workers, he said a meeting was convened where the general supervisor was in attendance and the workers were asked to mention the name of any of the supervisors who is collecting money from them. They could not name anyone, only for the workers to chase away the general supervisor out of the premises after the meeting when they could not mention her name.
