Labour

‘Incessant strike, minimum wage implementation worsen workers living condition in Nigeria’

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3 years ago

The living condition of workers in the last seven years of President Muhammadu Buhari’s government is bedeviled by economic hardship occasioned by many anti-people policies of the government. Comrade Emmanuel Ugboaja, the General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said this to CHRISTIAN APPOLOS in this exclusive media chat. He also noted that workers have been affected by the exacerbating insecurity in the country and incessant strike in the education sector. He also chastised the Federal Government for allowing state governments to flout the National Minimum Wage Law. Excerpts.

President Muhammadu Buhari clocked seven years in office on May 29. As the General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), how would you describe the experience of workers within this period? What is his score card in the eyes of the organised labour, especially with regards to how workers have fared?

I will classify it into three. Basically, on what ordinarily you call bread and butter issues for the worker; I am talking about issues such as wages and job security. On these two issues, President Buhari has fared well because you will remember his famous statement to governors that he cannot imagine how they will go to bed and sleep peacefully knowing they are owing workers. That was at the height of the infamous trend of governors owing workers across states — years, 18 months, 21 months, nine months. The man couldn’t fathom it and he made that famous statement.

So from that point of view, you will see a man who wasn’t comfortable making workers to be uncomfortable, if you view it from that. Moving further to that, you will also appreciate the fact that he also kept faith with the national minimum wage. In spite of pressures from the sub national, the state governors and the likes, he kept faith and made sure that there was an amendment, a review of that law under his watch. So on that score too, you will not say he was antagonistic to the worker.

You will also recall that clearly, there was intense pressure on retrenchment, because the common reference whenever you are asking for wage increase is we will reduce the workforce. But he kept faith and did not embark on any retrenchment, in spite of the pressure from crude economic advisors and lazy economic thinkers that always feel the best way to solve such issues is to pounce on labour rather than think creatively on how to even bring more labour to bake a bigger cake. So on that score, you might even call him a worker-friendly president.

One of the largest economic challenges that have bedeveilled workers arises from insecurity. We have lost our members to the challenge of insecurity in the Northwest and in the North East. We have lost workers — nurses, teachers, road transport workers — under his watch also. So, we can say we are not smiling in that direction. We will also not forget easily our running battle with the government on subsidy removal. Though on a score you will then say there was a win-win or no victor no vanquished because he got away with some increase and in another instance, he bowed to the pressure of the Organised Labour.

On how he has managed the implementation of the law, that is another score I cannot say he has done well. Because for you to go into Council of State meetings with people that have brazenly flouted our laws without cautioning them is what I find difficult to comprehend. The Minimum Wage Act is a national law and for you to sit in meetings with people who look you in the face and are boasting to have broken the law yet you cannot do anything is indeed worrisome.

Nothing can be more ridiculous than for people who swore to uphold our constitution and our laws to sit in government chambers and then make a ridicule of our laws. So, the President could use if not the coercive force of the federation, at least the legal bite of the federation to say there must be enforcement of the law of our land.

One would have expected that the Attorney General of the Federation would have been instructed by the President to take on these people and compel them. So that it will be clear to everybody that if you cannot respect our laws, then you vacate office. There should have been a clear challenge of this because that is a breach of the constitution for you to brazenly disregard our laws; it is a breach of the oath of office.

On the incessant strike in the education sector, what is the rating of the Organised Labour?

That is another area that you can be sure the government hasn’t fared well. It becomes very funny that the person who is making a mess of collective agreement is the government. So when you view it from that point of reasoning, it becomes very much more worrisome that the person who is making a clear mess of the agreement on issue that will move the country forward is the government.

When you verify what is causing the strike, you will find out that government’s insincerity is chief. Strike is a legitimate weapon used by workers globally. It is a standard practice that the worker has the innate fundamental right to withdraw services where he feels he is being pushed to the wall and there is nothing left to do.

What else do you do when you have an agreement with the government and that agreement is breached? What else do you do if not to go on strike? What are the indicators you can carry out? So the strike option is the most civilised route that the worker can take and it behoves on government to then do what is right, it behoves on government to respect an agreement freely entered into. One would have thought that workers will be the one saying look, we were coerced with the force of the state to sign this agreement.

Clearly, there are no places in the world that you don’t have challenges in the world of work but people, society and organisations have gradually and continuously not allowed certain problems to keep recurring. They had found answers to them. It is only in our own instance that people sit and keep allowing the same problem to recur over and over without providing the answers and the answers are straightforward.

You cannot say you don’t have money, for instance, and then we are all here together watching frivolous expenses being made. We are watching humongous sums being bandied as stolen and corruptly taken away by people. If you had pushed this money into the right avenues, there will be nothing to steal. But you cajoled and harass legitimate demands, push those demanding legitimately, hoodwink them, pound them to stupor, to submission to enable you steal our collective heritage; that is a challenge you have.

The government must learn to allow our monies to be channelled to the places that we will come and verify that they are being used, rather than intimidate people because it is the same thing that the state governors do. They refuse to pay salaries, they harass everybody and chase them out of the state. Then at the end of the administration, you begin to hear the callous amount of money that had been stolen.

If they had used the money to pay salaries, there will be no need for EFCC to be chasing them. If they had used the monies to pay salaries, EFCC won’t be jumping through the roof to enter anybody’s house. Because these were people, when they were in power, were reluctant to pay salaries. We have pile up of gratuity, we have pile up of pension arears, we have pileup of leave grants and leave allowances, we have arrears of salaries unpaid, but these people live in dangerous luxury. Because all they do is harass people away from their legitimate demands, only to embezzle those funds.

To leave indelible mark in the hearts of workers, what do Nigerian workers expect President Buhari to do before he leaves office next year, especially with regards to workers welfare?

We have things that inhibit even the enjoyment of the meagre salary we hope for. We have the challenge of transportation, which is driven by our naturally gifted resource, crude oil, being refined outside the country and then brought back to us as exorbitant liquid gold. The President, definitely, it is not rocket science, it is not something that is impossible, can ensure that in the next nine months, our refineries come back on stream and work. It will be a big relief to the working people and their families.

The President, in the next nine months, can help attack the challenge of power that a cabal even under his watch has held people to ransom rather than improve on our generated and disputable capacity. They only talk about increase in charges so that at the end of the day, if you had 10,000 megawatts which would have satisfied people, you then want to get the amount you would have realised if you had 10,000 megawatts.

So, he has the duty, the responsibility to have a critical, dispassionate look at the robbery or the criminality, that bedevils our power sector because it is an open secret and it is ridiculous. It is a pity that it is only in that direction you will hear them say that government is a continuum. If we do this now, they will say we are discouraging investment. You cannot be discouraging investment by attacking fraud, you cannot be discouraging investment by attacking evil contraptions that were put to make sure that a country continues to bleed. Rather what you will be doing is set the record straight to make sure that nobody comes imputing evil clauses in contracts.

Clearly, it is ridiculous that people will be paying for what is not being consumed and you say if you cancel it, they will say you have cancelled investments. It is a simplistic way of explaining your culpability in a problem, because it is ridiculous.

Nobody will say that, because they have done worse things. His government has done worse things to discourage investment that has nothing to do with facing the evil that is called the power sector reform, now brandishing that that will be seen as encouraging divestment and discouraging inflow of foreign investment. That is not true.

Earlier, their catchphrase was, ‘We are bringing in people with financial muscle from outside the country, we are bringing in people with technical know-how from outside the country.’ Those were lies from the pit of hell because what we now hear is ‘We borrowed money from the banks in Nigeria,’ none of these people is attached to any technical capacity with regards to power sector. When you now say, bring in these, they say we need money to contact people. That means you weren’t a player in that industry in the first instance. So that clearly is a fraudulently induced contract.

For the government to now tell you, if we cancel it, if we review, it will be seen as not continuing. It only shows culpability because that is part of what we have learned. There is no difference between the former government and the current government. You see it in the way they change personnel; so clearly, there is no difference. But he is someone that ordinarily you will feel that there are areas that you can say from antecedents that he should not be involved in and this corrupt angle is one area where I would have felt that he should come out clean. But that is not the case.

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