Business activities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) remained sluggish yesterday after the five-day holidays occasioned by Nigerian Labour Congress' (NLC)'s warning strike and the 58th Independence festivities.
On September 25, Nigeria's three labour centres had declared an indefinite warning strike to press the Muhammadu Buhari administration to adopt a new minimum wage for workers.
The strike, which started on Wednesday last week kept most Federal Government workers indoors thus grinding business activities in the FCT to a halt.
But in addition to the strike, the Federal Government had declared October 1, 2018 public holiday in observance of Nigeria's Independence Day.
Although, the strike was called off on Sunday while the Independence Day celebration ended on Monday, business activities remained dull and dreary hours after the two events ended.
At the Federal Secretariat, fewer numbers of staff were seen in the offices while most of the desks were unoccupied.
One of the directors confirmed that some of the workers traveled home and were not yet back. He also explained that some of the workers in his department complained sick and were granted sick leave.
One of the workers corroborated the position of the director, saying that some of his colleagues traveled to their villages because of the strike declared by NLC and the public holiday announced by the Federal Government.
"I came because I did not travel since I did not have any money to travel. The strike came at the wrong time. NLC should have waited until they paid us before embarking on the strike," he lamented.
The hardest hit in the lull were the taxi drivers who traversed the nooks and crannies of the city empty due to the scanty number of people in the city.
A taxi driver regretted coming out for business yesterday because, according to him, he bought N3000 fuel (yesterday morning) and till this afternoon (yesterday), he had not recovered the money.
"If I do not recover the money today, I will not come out tomorrow (today)," he lamented, regretting why he even came out for business in the first place.
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