Amid the prevailing agitations of labour unions in Nigeria, Akeem Ayofe Akinwale, a professor of Employment Relations and Labour Studies at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), speaks with IMOLEAYO OYEDEYI on the recent industrial action embarked upon by the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), and why many key interventions of Bola Tinubu’s administration have not been delivering the needed impacts despite appearing well-crafted.
Due to the intervention of the National Security Adviser (NSA), the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Wednesday suspended the nationwide strike initially declared over an alleged assault on the NLC president, Comrade Joe Ajaero. What is your take on the brutalisation of the NLC leader and the resultant industrial action?
Well, I don’t think it is an allegation, because everybody could see clearly that the man was attacked. We all saw his swollen face. So, the injury is visible. We saw the video clip of where he was being rough-handled and hurriedly taken away from the scene of the attack to an unknown destination. So, I don’t think that is an allegation again. I understand that if a matter has not gone through the court of law, some languages can be used. But the incident truly happened and it is quite appalling to see this in a democratic society when citizens are supposed to enjoy freedom of movement and freedom of expression. Mind you, this person is not a criminal. At least, we did not see him commit any crime. Even at that, criminals are supposed to enjoy some benefits of doubt until a court of competent jurisdiction determines their case and what the punishment should be. And I doubt if beating is part of the civilised justice-delivery system. Even if a criminal is found guilty of an offence, it is either the criminal is sentenced to serve some terms in prison or otherwise depending on the gravity of the offence. To me, that kind of beating is not civilised.
But just as you rightly said, the NSA intervened and has even promised that the perpetrators would be brought to justice. It was said that some of the attackers have been arrested and will be prosecuted. And those yet to be arrested will also be taken and prosecuted. That is a kind of promissory note. What everybody expects is that the NSA should pursue that cause to a logical conclusion, because it will send a wrong signal, if nothing tangible comes out of the case at the end of the day. So for me, I think the attack is condemnable and should not happen to anyone in the country irrespective of the person’s status.
But the Organised Private Sector (OPS) and the maritime operators described the strike as ill-timed and misconceived. They argued that the reason the NLC gave wasn’t a justifiable one considering the economic shocks gripping the country at the moment. What do you have to say on this, especially since the labour union claimed the strike was used to protest against the flagrant impunity of the present administration?
I think the position of the OPS is misplaced, if we take into consideration the lives of the Nigerian workers, who are suffering and those described as ghost workers that have not been receiving their salaries despite going to work. If we consider the situation they may be in terms of battling hunger, lacking adequate medical care, and facing other difficult situations that require immediate attention, we will not say that the labour should wait till when the atmosphere is relaxed before declaring a strike. This is because if we are talking about the lives of workers, including their health and safety, from this premise, we can see that the opinion of the OPS is misplaced because it did not take into consideration the rights of the workers that the NLC is fighting for.
You know, people can have different ways of interpreting an event. That is their own opinion. However, I think it is biased and did not take into consideration the reason that made the NLC to embark on that rally, which formed the basis for the strike that was suspended. So really, the question about what should be the appropriate time is very controversial because once there is fire on a mountain, it requires immediate attention. In fact, if democracy is really mature, we should not be talking about asking the labour to wait for when the time is right before they can exercise their democratic rights. In a civilised and democratic society, what the government needs to do is to offer preventive treatments for such situations. This is because if there are no grudges or grievances, the labour will not have a cause to say they want to embark on a protest or demonstrate. So, if the government had done the needful without any discrimination, it is possible we may not have seen what we saw.
One thing is that workers also have rights to equity, fairness, justice, and the like. Even in a democratic society, situations where some workers experience discrimination for whatever reasons should not be encouraged. But if this happens, it therefore means that the labour unions have the right to embark on strike at any time whatsoever. It is only that we may want to advise the union to think twice before proceeding on the strike for certain periods, which then brings into the situation a paradox.
Still on the raison detre for the strike, some people argued that the way Comrade Ajaero went to lead the protest in Imo State when it was just a few days before the state governorship election was an attempt to somehow limit Governor Hope Uzodimma’s chances at the poll. How could this be?
For me, I don’t think so. In a democratic society, the records should speak for any leader. And citizens are not robots. They are human beings. Mind you, it is not what happens a few days before the election that determines the electoral victory. The truth is: people have their minds and they always think of the past, and what a particular aspirant has done in the lives of the people over the years. So the cumulative effect of people’s understanding of the relevance or impact of a particular candidate is what usually determines their choices on election day, and not what happens a few days before the election in a civilised society. But when some political actors are out to manipulate the minds of the electorate, they will not want anybody to interrupt what they are planning.
But some people said the strike was not even done within the confines of the rule of law; what do you say to this?
Well, there was a court injunction to stop the strike. So, I believe the labour unions were supposed to obey the court order because not respecting the injunction is an anti-democratic posture. But that is understandable in view of the situation we find ourselves in the country today. There is precedence to this as we have seen in the past that both the government and some non-state actors have refused to obey court judgments. It has been that if the court ruling is convenient, they will obey, but if it is not convenient for them, at another time, they will disobey. It is really not appropriate and I think the labour union is also guilty on this premise because if there is a court injunction, it is expected of them to respect the order. Mind you, this time round, it is not a judgment per se, but an exparte order, which was a kind of order from the court of law to prevent the strike from happening. Though the unions have claimed ignorance of the order, we all know that ignorance is not an excuse in the law court. But we also need to understand that sometimes, the labour also uses a political approach to drive home its point, such that whenever it knows that it can disobey a court order and get away with it, they simply do it as part of its own strategy of confronting injustice.
Some critical stakeholders even described the strike declared by Comrade Ajaero’s NLC as an abuse of power. Do you think this is entirely correct, considering the fact that about 19 labour unions, including the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the Senior Staff Union of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), the Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria, the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria, and the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria, among others, joined the strike in solidarity with the NLC?
In the first instance, I will not agree that the strike is an abuse of power. And anybody that says such is merely demonstrating ignorance of labour issues. History of labour movements in the country has shown clearly that if proper care is not taken, what started as a very minor issue may end up triggering more cases. In fact, a leader that truly understands labour struggle will not take even an ordinary slap in the face lightly. The fact is if that slap is condoned the first time, the second time, the person may cut off the head of the labour leader, knowing full well that he slapped the man the first time and nothing happened. So it is not an abuse of power, but a logical response to secure lives and defend the labour territory, because a crisis of that nature has led to much loss of lives in the past. And if the NLC has not done what it did, it will show clearly that they don’t mind whether somebody even kills any one of them during the struggle. Don’t also forget that if labour leaders are captured, it may spell an end to labour movements. More so, if some people say the reaction of the labour union is an abuse of power, what of the action of the police and secret agents that triggered the NLC strike? Are those not clear abuses of power from the government’s side, which failed to respect the fundamental rights of the citizens?
There is a belief in some quarters that since the Bola Tinubu government came into power, the NLC has been using different kinds of industrial actions to blackmail the administration, perhaps because the union allegedly shares certain sympathy for the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate in the last election, Peter Obi. Do you think this is very much possible?
Well, individuals are entitled to their opinions, though not all opinions are well-intentioned and credible. I believe if there are no issues, it will be stupid of the NLC to even have a way. And I don’t think the labour union has been blackmailing the government, because I have been keenly observing the situations since the new government came into power. It is just that Nigerian workers are really suffering because even the so-called minimum wage is nothing to write home about. If you divide the minimum wage to see how much a worker earns per day, you will see that it is less than N4,000. Yet, they work for eight hours. If you then factor in the cost of transportation and feeding being driven very rapidly by inflation, you will see that the workers are really suffering.
Meanwhile, if you were to consider the situation in Nigeria with those of other countries, even within the West African sub-region, you would realise that Nigerian workers are really facing affliction. And this form one of the premises that define the engagement of labour unions and their reactions to government policies. But we quite understand that the new administration is not the source of the present-day crisis as it inherited the economic misery from the last government. But it is expected that every government will come up with a blueprint that details its comprehensive policies and plans to mitigate the adverse socio-economic situations, which is affecting the people. So, I think the labour union has been considerate of the present administration. The union has always issued warnings and ultimatums, which is normal and the government too has always responded appropriately. So there has been a common understanding between both the government and the labour union since the beginning.
I am coming from the academic world and you understand the raging battle between the government and ASUU, which is another issue that requires attention. For the last strike we embarked upon, the government withheld our salaries, despite the fact that we did the work. Even after the strike was suspended, we also did and cleared the backlog of the work that we were supposed to have done in terms of teaching and conducting examinations during the period of the strike. But despite this, our eight-month salaries are still being withheld up till now.
Recently, the government issued a memo that it was willing to pay us four months salaries out of the eight months backlog, but with a condition that ASUU will sign an undertaking that it will no longer embark on any strike in the future or cause any trouble. Look at that kind of condition. The union swiftly rejected the government’s offer, because it was a negation of the principles of democracy. That is part of the actions coming from the present administration. The government did not even consider the fact that the consistent depreciation of the naira will affect the value of the money if paid to us, nor has it shown any readiness to pay the whole backlog fully. We all know that the university lecturers worked for this money, yet they are not being paid.
Come to think of it, the withheld salaries of medical doctors have been paid. Yet, we are all in the same system. Isn’t that discrimination? Workers in the same country are treated in different ways. So for a government that does this, what kind of response do you think it will get from the organised labour? Now, if ASUU decides to respond to the government’s offer in a negative way, won’t some people be saying the union is also blackmailing the government? So, I don’t think the labour union has been blackmailing the current administration based on party affiliation. I don’t think that is correct, if we closely analyse what has been happening.
Meanwhile, before any policy is implemented, the government is supposed to carry out what is called the Social Impact Assessment (SIA). The question we should ask ourselves is: when this administration came with its policies, did it carry out any SIA before implementing any of the policies? This is because the SIA will tell you the baseline data, how the new policy is likely to affect the people, and the measures the government should put in place to mitigate the undesirable impact and consequences of the proposed policy. And then, the measures would have been delivered before the implementation of the policy began, which is what the principle says. But have we done this so far in Nigeria? I think the answer is an emphatic No! It is not when the implementation of a policy has started that the government should begin to make interventions. The interventions should have started before the policy implementation. But in our case, the reverse is the case, such that the people were already suffering before the government started thinking of how to rescue them. It is not supposed to be so. If the right thing had been done, the people would not be suffering and the labour would also have had no reason to cry.
So as it stands now, what is ASUU planning to do? Is it to stay off work or remain in class without payment?
If you look closely for some months now, you will see that many ASUU members are already resigning. Currently, if you speak with five vice chancellors of universities, they will tell you that they have been losing their academic staff in droves since the whole saga of non-payment of salaries began. As it is now, the remaining members are simply watching and giving the government time to do the right thing. Some of them are also looking for every opportunity to exit the system, which is not good for the quality of our education in Nigeria because even the academic staff that remains in the system have lost total interest in the job. Some of us are still nursing the wound of what has happened and what is happening at the moment. The way the government treated ASUU during the last strike is a form of humiliation. The union is simply yet to recover from this. The multiplier effect of this is already happening through the exodus of some academic staff and the declining level of commitment. If the current situation drags on as it is, only God knows what will happen.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then