The Elegant Nurses Forum (ENF) has paid tribute to Comrade Emmanuel Okechukwu Ugboaja, the General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), who died on August 22, 2026, at the age of 60, describing his death as an occasion for the country to confront the state of its health sector.
Ugboaja’s death was formally announced days later by NLC President Joe Ajaero to the Congress’s National Executive Council during a meeting in Enugu, after a letter from the family. Sources close to the labour leader said he had battled leukaemia for close to four years before his passing.
Ugboaja, a lawyer and veteran trade unionist, became the fifth General Secretary of the NLC in August 2019, succeeding Peter Ozo-Eson. Born on May 15, 1966, he studied law at the University of Calabar, graduating in 1987, before joining the trade union movement in 1993, a move that made him, by the NLC’s own account, the first Nigerian lawyer to work full-time for a trade union. He rose through the ranks of the National Union of Chemical, Footwear, Rubber, Leather and Non-Metallic Products Employees, serving as its General Secretary between 2000 and 2005, before joining the NLC Secretariat in 2009.
In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Nurse Thomas Abiodun Olamide, the ENF described Ugboaja as a comrade who “dedicated several decades of his life to the Nigerian working class and the struggle for better conditions for workers,” and extended condolences to his family, the NLC leadership and Nigerian workers generally.
Beyond mourning, the ENF used the statement to draw attention to what it called the neglect of Nigeria’s health sector, pointing to underfunding, poor infrastructure, inadequate staffing, high treatment costs and weak social protection as conditions under which “even workers who spend their productive years serving the country are not adequately protected when illness strikes.”
The group singled out the absence of effective and comprehensive health insurance for civil servants, including health workers, as particularly troubling, arguing that many preventable deaths in Nigeria trace back to poverty, poor access to healthcare, unaffordable treatment and inadequate social protection burdens it said fall on workers, pensioners, nurses, doctors, farmers, traders, students and the poor alike.
The ENF went further, framing Ugboaja’s death as a call to action for the Nigerian labour movement. It urged workers to recognise their collective power to shape governance, to reject politicians it accused of treating public office as a route to personal enrichment, and to push for what it termed a “total system change” one in which healthcare is accessible, workers are properly paid and protected, and public resources serve ordinary citizens rather than a privileged few.
The group called on the NLC, the Trade Union Congress, affiliate unions and civil society organisations to strengthen unity and continue the struggle for decent wages, affordable healthcare, workers’ welfare and a decent standard of living.
“We must not allow the memory of our fallen comrades to become mere speeches and condolences,” the statement read. “Let their sacrifices strengthen our resolve.”
The Elegant Nurses Forum closed its tribute with a call to solidarity: “Comrade Emmanuel Ugboaja, you have gone ahead of us, but the struggle continues. Rest in power, Comrade.”
