The Federal Government and the organised labour are currently locked in battle over the minimum wage issue. What, in your assessment, is the way forward?
The minimum wage conundrum brings to the fore two salient issues out of the many problems confronting Nigeria: the issue of restructuring and the gross insensitivity of the ruling elite to the plight of ordinary Nigerians. When you look at restructuring, for example a federation like Nigeria consists of federating units and each unit is supposed to be a group of people with the same history, the same culture, the same sensibilities, and of course it should be obvious to everybody that each federating unit will have its own resources at different levels of development and exploitation.
In other words, the situations, cost of living are not expected to be the same. Their values arising from their history and culture are different; their priorities will be different and this is why they call it a federation. Each federating unit will control its destiny and regulate its activities, set its priorities, in accordance with its history. Then all the units will agree to cede certain powers to the central government, which will be in a position to look after defence, foreign relations and currency, while responsibilities like policing, roads and infrastructure will be shared.
How did things work out in the First Republic?
Things worked out successfully in the First Republic. Perhaps I will take your mind back to the 1956/1957 Constitutional Conference when Sir Ahmadu Bello said he was not ready for independence and he walked out of the conference. It took Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe to go and persuade him that what they were asking for was a federation. In other words, each region would be able to run its government. Each region had premiers called leaders of government business and each region exploited its own resources, sent 20 per cent of the resources to the Federal Government, another 20 per cent into the Distributable Pool. In other words, the second 20 will be gathered together and distributed to the regions according to population, size and so on. Then I think 10 per cent was for emergency purposes. Then the regions held on to 50 per cent. And that was why the Action Group government was able to give us free education here, to develop our roads and do everything it did here. The same thing happened to the East: as soon as we had our own television here, the North decided it wanted its own television. The competition was healthy and the regions learnt from one another.
Where did we go wrong?
We went wrong with the two evils that bedeviled Nigeria. The first was military rule that truncated the region’s progress march. The second was the oil boom. Unfortunately, the oil boom came during the military interregnum. The military were trained to fight wars and destroy; the oil boom came andour leaders got intoxicated to the extent that one of them said money was not the problem of Nigeria but how to spend it. Again because of the Civil War too— of course it was military interregnum that brought the civil war–the administration of Gowon decided to create more states, to fight the war successfully.
There are reports that 10 states have agreed to pay N30,000 but the Federal Government has been vacillating on the issue. It’s been said that states like Zamfara are currently paying less than the current N18,000 minimum wage. How do we get out of this conundrum?
It is because of this centralised, dysfunctional federation that we have this problem. I will take your mind back to the First Republic. The Western Region was paying by far higher than the Federal Government, so our brightest minds opted to work for the Western Region rather than the federal. A state exploiting its own resources for the good of its people will fix its own minimum wage. It may be higher than the national minimum wage.
You see, the national minimum wage ought to be the responsibility of the Federal Government and the organised labour: it should not involve the governors. Nigeria was paying three shillings and six pence per day but Chief Awolowo paid five shillings and later increased it to seven shillings and six pence. That was the ordinary worker. The Permanent Secretary was earning less than 100 pounds per month. Compare this with what we have today when a House of Reps member reportedly earns close to N18 million a month and a senator earns about N30 million as against even the 30,000 that we are debating. In the First Republic, legislation was on a part-time basis. Lawmakers were being paid sitting allowances. The longest they had to stay sometimes was not more than two weeks.
How much were they earning?
They were paid only sitting allowances.
Maybe that’s because we had the parliamentary system then?
There is no system you have that you cannot adapt to your economic realities. This country cannot fund full-time bicameral legislature at the centre, and full-time legislature in the states.
Critics would argue that if the executive and judiciary are full time, there’s no basis for saying that the legislature should operate part time.
I will give you a small exercise. Watch the network news every night and see the amounts of seats that are vacant. What is the duty of the legislature? To make laws for the good governance of Nigeria and perform oversight functions on government institutions. There’s no reason why this cannot be done on a part-time basis. The salaries and allowances of our lawmakers are scandalous and frightening. I expected members of labour to have shouted themselves hoarse on the allowances. Our ruling elite must shed weight.
Is it only at the level of the legislature that we need to shed weight?
Even the executive. That’s why I said ruling elite; it comprises the executive and the legislature. There is no weight to be shed in the judiciary because it is in fact purely funded. We are yet to fully modernise and digitalise the courts to make judgments easy to obtain. I am amazed at the insensitivity of the ruling elite. A legislator who offers to come and serve us for a period of four years, apart from salaries, receives severance allowances and pensioners are left unpaid.He opted to come and serve us and there should be nothing like severance allowances. Not in an economy that is almost at its lowest level.
What is our GDP per capita? It is one of the lowest even in Africa. So, we cannot afford such luxuries: the country’s resources are not meant for the ruling elite alone. They are meant for the almost 200 million Nigerians.
Many workers fear that if the country is restructured, they will lose their jobs…
That fear is unfounded. We must recognise our differences in levels of development which makes the cost of living cheaper in my own hometown of Efon Alaaye, Ekiti State, cheaper than the cost of living in Ibadan, Oyo State, whereas the cost of living in Ibadan is cheaper than in Warri, Delta State or Port Harcourt, Rivers State and Lagos. Therefore, the amount of resources available to Rivers and Bayelsa are in multiples of what is available to us in Ekiti. So, for the governor of Ekiti State or the governor of Zamfara State to earn the same allowances, salaries as the governor of Rivers State is unfair and unjust.
When we say restructuring, we mean that each federating unit will be enabled to exploit its resources. There are a lot of resources that have been left untapped across Nigeria because of this over centralisation. If a state has the resources, it can on its own negotiate foreign countries to come in, tap the resources and then pay tax to the government. So, what we are saying has nothing to do with sending workers away. But I insist that it is still a process: you cannot decree it. That is why, for example, if anybody is coming to Yorubaland to campaign, we have to sit with him. If he agrees to restructuring, he will tell us his programmes with timelines.
and then