For Airways workers, 2019 election is payback time

IN less than three weeks from now, Nigerians will be going to the polls to elect the president that will run the affairs of the country in the next four years.

As the day draws nearer, the atmosphere is charged with all manner of campaigns coming from the over 70 different presidential candidates from the different political parties.

Just as the different candidates continue to convince and confuse the Nigerian people on why they should be voted for come February 16, 2019, trust Nigerians, while many have made up their minds on the candidates to pitch their tents with, some are yet to settle for their own choice.

Interestingly, the political melodrama surrounding the critical exercise has not exempted the country’s aviation sector like other sectors where workers including the civil servants are also ready to exercise their franchise.

Talking about the aviation sector where its workers had participated in electing the four different governments that had managed the affairs of the country from 1999 till now, there is however a group of workers in the sector who due to the sad circumstances they found themselves in the hands of the various governments, could not take part in the past elections.

Top on this group is the over 4, 996 former workers of the defunct Nigeria Airways whose place of work was unwisely liquidated by one of the four governments.

Liquidating the former national carrier was not even the issue but the ungodly and unjust manner the previous governments treated the former workers who toiled for the national airline.

It is no longer news that since the airline was finally liquidated fifteen years ago, a lot of dramas had unfolded ranging from the preferential treatment granted by the subsequent governments to the foreign workers of the airline across Europe and America who were almost immediately paid off their full entitlements after the inglorious liquidation.

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It is also on record that these subsequent governments that deemed it fit to respect the labour laws of the foreign countries, made a mockery of their own as witnessed in the embarrassing and wicked manner they denied their own citizens and even their counterparts in other African countries the payment of their entitlements.

The subsequent governments continued with this injustice while over one thousand of the former workers were sent to their early graves because of the shock that came with the unjust treatment.

Of the previous governments that had held sway within this periods, only that of the Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua took pity on the former workers as he struggled to pay five years out of the twenty years the government agreed to pay them.

The pains and agonies the workers were subjected to after the demise of Yar’Adua was rather left imagined in the hands of the subsequent governments until the present government of Muhammadu Buhari finally open their book of remembrance.

Respite finally came the way of the former workers when Buhari in line with his promise to pay them fulfilled the promise towards the end of 2018 when he brought life back to the almost lifeless workers by paying the first batch of the outstanding entitlements running to the tune of N22 billion just as he promised to pay the balance of N22 billion after six months.

This gesture from the Buhari government according to the Chairman of the former workers under the aegis of Aviation Union Grand Alliance (AUGA), former Nigeria Airways Branch, Comrade LooqmanAnimashaun was a life saver for many of the former workers who would have further suffered to death like the thousands of the unlucky ones who had earlier died.

While the payment of the former workers has since kicked off, the interesting aspect of the development is that all the former workers have decided to reciprocate the good gesture by moving out in their large numbers to vote for the re-election of Buhari come 2019.

Speaking on behalf of the former workers, Animashaun said they have decided to seize the election opportunity as a pay back time for them to say thank you to Buhari for what he did and for his promise to pay them the balance of their entitlements in 2019.

To openly declare their support for Buhari, the former workers have started mobilizing themselves and their family members to hold a political rally come first week of February at the Lagos airport to mobilize for a block vote for Buhari.

As the former workers prepares for what they termed the mother of all political rallies in the sector, the lesson to be learnt by those who find themselves in any position of authority is not to take people for granted as there will always be a pay back time.