Govs who refuse to pay N30,000 minimum wage shouldn’t sleep —Oshiomhole

Former President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and immediate past Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, during the Workers’ Day celebration in Abuja spoke on the significance of May Day, challenges in Nigeria, the attitude of his former colleagues (governors) to workers’ welfare, the need for radical industrial policies in Nigeria and other related issues. SOJI-EZE FAGBEMI writes.

Need to celebrate May Day despite challenges

What people should know is that the word celebration is not the conventional way you celebrate when life is abundant and you are happy. The essence of May Day is simply to recognize that at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the world order was such that the worker was not allowed to combine with another worker in order to protect his interest and you cannot compare the power of an individual with the power of an employer. So, May Day is basically to celebrate all the sacrifices made by workers more than 150 years ago to just have the right to speak with one voice, and to challenge government as employer, and also challenge them as operators of the state as well as challenge private sector employers. It is not to suggest that people are happy, life is in abundance. You can’t be happy when, according to statistics, so many people are unemployed and there is tension on the few who are employed with the absence of unemployment benefits.

We need radical industrial policies

I also believe that we cannot continue to lament the crises that we face, they can be fixed, and they have to be fixed. I cannot accept for example that we will continue to rely on imported textile fabrics.  If Nigeria provides for the clothing requirement of 200 million people, you will have more than 10 million Nigerian workers employed directly. By the time you add the traders, and the other tailor and garment factories it will even be more. I do not accept that all the vehicles here, and all the vehicles on the roads in Nigeria, that we have come to accept that Michelin can relocate from Nigeria to another place, and sell Michelin, finished tyres to us to put in our vehicles. I cannot even accept that Dunlop is gone, but their products would be imported to Nigeria. We do need radical industrial policies, this is no time for diplomacy, it is time for frank, bold action, think big and act even bigger. I don’t believe that we can lament and wallow in self-pity and people will change what they do because they would have mercy. I believe we should re-order the system, where we make it impossible for inequity to continue to flourish. I have my own view on a lot of these things, I wouldn’t have become the President of NLC. If the textile factories had closed, it means I would have been unemployed and I’m not sure what would have happened to my children and even now my grandchildren. So, I have no difficulties in understanding the challenges that we face.

The real challenge is the army of unemployable youth

The real challenge I see is that many of these guys are simply not going to be employable because they were not educated. We cannot accept the fact that Nigeria is the capital of out of school children. How can governors explain that? I was a governor, I ensured that every subsidy that the Federal Government provided for Universal Basic Education, Edo State Government under my watch paid the corresponding matching grant to ensure that not only do we have good schools but that children have access to going to school. We even provided free transportation.

NASS members have no conscience moving against $60 national minimum wage

When these people say they don’t have enough money, talking about minimum wage, for example, I have seen a lawyer who registered a company for N250 million in this country. That N250 million was more than $2 million. A country that can afford to give one lawyer like that, that lawyer was writing every day that N30,000 minimum wage is not realistic. A governor that buys Toyota Land Cruiser for whatever is the price in Sokoto, in Kaduna, in Edo, in Rivers, in Zamfara, in Lagos, when they are buying those vehicles, do they tell the marketer, sell according to the ability of my state? They pay the market price. So, why will you selectively apply this very dubious logic of ability? Nobody has the ability for anything except what you believe in and nobody has resources for anything except what you regard as a priority. You cannot have a National Assembly that takes so much, every day, every week, every month and on that floor of the National Assembly, somebody is questioning, why a Nigerian worker should earn $60 for 30 days which is about $2 a day. I am a believer that if you are at the top of a mango tree and you are feasting on top of a mango tree and I’m on the ground and you are trampling my head, I have to grab your feet.

Nigeria war ‘ll be between the rich and poor, not Northerners and Southerners

I believe Nigeria would be fine but the only thing I am worried about is the resurgence of ethnic champions and even religious bigots who now partition the country in a way that the ruling class unite in comfort, but they go back to their localities and play up primordial sentiments. I argued just two days ago that if there is going to be rotation, or division, or whatever; or there is going to be a fight between anybody, it cannot be between Northerner and Southerner, Easterner and Westerner; it has to be between the poor and the rich. These are the two classes, you know it. You cover the nation. So, when you oppress your own people and they want to ask questions, you point to the other tribe or you point to the other religion. All those are not the issue.

Present and past political office holders responsible for Nigeria’s destruction

The beauty of Nigeria Labour Congress and the organised national platform such as this is that they are organised across all the divides regardless of religion, regardless of any of those primordial sentiments and we need more of those national institutions. It is not me, for example, or anybody who has had the opportunity like me. I was once president of NLC, speaking for all workers; anybody who has had the opportunity to be a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has no right to begin to question the unity of our country. Anyone who has been a national player and those who are talking today are the ones responsible for the destruction as it is today. Whatever we want to do, we must recognize that in every state, in every local government, in every community, we have the good people, we have the bad people.

Workers must organize, forceful/assertive and prevent bad governance

I want the Nigerian workers to organize, across all the primordial sentiments and become a force, capable not only of thinking or talking, but also assertive and prevent bad governance. We can’t accept any Nigerian governor today refusing to implement the minimum wage. He should not go to bed. President Buhari said, and I don’t think you can have more support than that, to governors: “How do you sleep Mr. Governors, when you have not paid your workers salaries for one month, two months, six months?” If I have a Commander in Chief saying that, I don’t need any other license to close down any of those states that refuse to perform. If your state is not capable or competent to meet the most basic social protection, then why should you exist? Meanwhile, we can see the governors with all the social protection, with all the luxuries, how come the workers cannot have it.

I was a governor, so, I am not talking out of envy.  When I was governor, I increased the minimum wage to N25,000 when some governors said N18,000 was not possible. So, I know from my own experience every country created by God has enough to meet the basic needs of everyone, but no country in the world has enough to meet the greed of a few, and it must be clear to NLC that sermon may not change it. We have to organise, we would not agonize. We have to fight, we would not wallow in self-pity. We have to target and close down. Even the time we spent rationalizing minimum wage if a right-wing NPN government could create minimum wage and military dictator implemented it, how can APC dominated National Assembly, even tolerate that motion. That, for me, is an insult and very embarrassing that an APC dominated House of Representatives presided over by APC progressive speaker, allowed that? Do we know the meaning of progressive? When Shagari government introduced the minimum wage, Kaduna State Governor, Balarabe Musa, of blessed memory and Abubakar Rimi of Kano decided that PRP would pay better than NPN, and they decided to pay N127. That N2 extra, they said was to show they were progressives. The last time I had the opportunity to talk to progressive governors in Jos, I said to them, for Nigeria to know the difference between the progressive and conservative, it will be my joy to see that every progressive governor pays.

Nigerians always talk about America Federalism. Can they borrow from the American President who says that to overcome the devastating consequences of COVID-19, that they have to stimulate the purchasing power of ordinary workers, not only by giving them cheques as Joe Biden did but now voting huge sums of money to deploy to infrastructure so that more people can be engaged?

Govs who refuses to pay N30,000 shouldn’t sleep; should be shut down

Any governor who fails to implement the law, should not just be challenged my mouth, he should be engaged. That is what I believe in, I don’t believe it is about words. These governors could decide to wear ear masks, but you can shut them down. We have the power. That is why we organised labour, not to lament, not to regret, not to appeal to emotion, but to face anybody who faces us. Any governor who refuses to pay N30,000 should not sleep, he should not, not for one month, not for two months; and any employers in the private sector too.

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