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The Nigerian governors are insisting to go ahead with their plans to either prune down the number of staff in their respective states or cut down the minimum wage, thereby causing anxiety among the labour unions who are now being mobilised to shut down governments if the they go ahead with their threats
| By Olu Ojewale | Dec 21, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, and state governors appear to be spoiling for war. The imminent war is on the plan by the governors to either reduce civil servants in their states or cut the minimum wage which stands at N18,000.00 per month.
On Thursday, November 19, the governors under the aegis of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF, apparently shocked the nation when they announced that they could no longer pay the minimum wage in view of the current economic hardship and proposed either to cut down the minimum wage or downsize their workforce.
This, understandably, has not gone down well with Nigerians, especially those who were already crying that the N18,000.00 minimum wage was too meagre for anyone to earn in the current economic climate. But in their arguments, the NGF in a communiqué issued at the end of its meeting, tried to convince the public that their position was noble and imperative.
Rising from a crucial meeting that ended at the early hours of November 19, at the Old Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara State and chairman of the NGF, read the governors’ communiqué, saying that the N18,000 minimum wage which was signed into law in March 2011 by former President Goodluck Jonathan, would no longer be feasible owing to the poor state of the economy. Specifically, the governors said that the burden of the wage was lighter when oil sold at $126 as against the current price of $41 per barrel.
Yari said that the NGF would meet with President Muhammadu Buhari on the economy, adding that the only way out of the quagmire was to diversify the economy towards agriculture and mining. “We resolved that we must look at ways to enhance revenue generation and at the same time look at ways to cut our overhead costs, especially the political office holders’ salaries and other overhead expenses,” he said, adding: “We will diversify our economy in the area of agriculture and mining. But at the same time, we should understand our situation where some of us (states) today are taking N100 million as monthly allocation and then have salaries of over N2 billion to pay.”
It appears that the NGF is serious about its decision to go ahead with its plan to either retrench workers or cut their salaries. This, apparently, necessitated an angry reaction from Ayuba Wabba, president of a faction of the NLC, who asked the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, and opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to call their governors to order because some of the governors were insisting on reducing the minimum wage or retrench workers.
Wabba, in a statement issued on Sunday, December 6, said the governors’ insistence would only lead to national crisis. The labour leader noted that in apparent reaction to the NLC’s earlier statement that the NGF’s threat to jettison the N18,000 minimum wage would amount to a declaration of war against the working people of Nigeria, said Yari had restated the determination of himself and his colleagues to implement the reduction or in the alternative embark on massive retrenchment of workers.
“By his reaction, the congress is convinced that Governor Yari is still holding on to his earlier argument that due to the fall in the price of crude oil at the international market, state governments are no longer in the position to pay the legal minimum wage to their workers.
“In case Governor Yari and his colleagues, most of whom are fresh in their positions, might not be aware, the principle behind minimum wage is that it is the minimum salary a worker is envisaged to earn to sustain himself or herself and his or her legal or legitimate dependents, over a daily or monthly period. In our context, a worker’s legitimate dependents include the worker’s spouse and four children,” he said.
Putting it in perspective, the NLC president explained that N18,000 divided by six persons over 30 days would amount to N100 per day per person, or N600 for the six persons per day.
Besides, he said the workers would take from the same meagre salary to pay for accommodation, healthcare, transportation, education, and maybe, some change for clothing to cater for basic necessities of daily existence.
He pointed out that some now received N50 million and N500 million monthly from the federation account sharing not on account of the fall in the price of crude oil alone, but because of the earlier reckless uneconomical borrowing from commercial banks.
The NLC accused some of the governors of having profligate lifestyles; keeping unnecessarily bloated political aides; awarding contracts for grandiose projects above prevailing market costs; allocating hundreds of millions of annual budget to security votes, which often ended up as slush funds as well as engaging and expending several millions of naira on travelling in official aircraft and helicopters on trips that would eventually yield next to nothing in return.
At the end of their tenure, he said, they would also give themselves lavish pension payoff as some of the former governors had done at the point of their exit from power which no successor governor had so far revoked.
But not all governors are in support of the NGF’s decision. “We commend the governors of Edo, Rivers, Jigawa and Ekiti states, and other progressive governors who have so far dissociated themselves from this insensitive and economically illogical campaign,” Wabba said.
The NLC leader warned that those who want to reduce the minimum wage would be acting in violation of the law of the land and a collective decision of Nigerians.
“All governors regardless of political colouration, took the oath of office to defend the laws and Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Minimum wage Act of 2010 which legitimises the negotiated N18,000 is part of the laws of the Federation. Nigerian workers will defend the rule of law including the Minimum Wage Law.
“By this statement, congress is putting our state councils and our industrial union affiliates at a full state of alert and to commence mobilisation to ensure that we can respond speedily and promptly to any action of the governors to carry out their threat,” the NLC president said.
Similarly, the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, warned that if the governors wanted workers to shut down the nation because of the issue, workers would gladly do so, saying “the governors should not think the Nigerian workers do not have the capacity to retrench them.”
Issa Aremu, a former vice-president of the NLC, in an interview advised governors who could not sustain paying the minimum wage of N18,000 of workers to resign. Aremu said governors had reason to continue to lead or remain in office. He said there were so many leakages and wastages in government that the governors needed to look into and start to make their states viable. Besides, he said many of them were so lazy on the issue of internal generated funds that they allowed it to be siphoned by some people.
Paulinus Ezeokafor, a bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Awka, Anambra State, said that reducing of workers’ salaries was “another national tragedy” in the making. Ezeokafor, who described the state governors’ proposed move as a disaster in waiting, blamed corrupt leaders for the economic woes bedevilling the country.
“The threats we are receiving today are results of the mismanagement of the natural resources by past corrupt public office holders. Some people, who ought to have maximised the nation’s resources, cornered the nation’s wealth into their pockets.
“We should be clamouring for a living wage for workers and not pay cut on the N18, 000 minimum wage which is not enough for the civil servant to solve their social and economic challenges,’’ he said.
To douse the tension building up over the agitation by labour unions, Chris Ngige, minister of Labour and Employment, on Tuesday, December 8, asked for ceasefire on the controversy over the review of national minimum wage, saying it is a constitutional matter that would not be achieved by mere protest or agitations without recourse to the National Assembly.
Ngige said both those who clamoured for the upward review of the minimum wage and those against it could not change the situation unless there was another dialogue with the workers union and the National Assembly repealed the National Minimum Wage Act in the status book.
That notwithstanding, Wabba on November 22, revealed that the NLC had submitted a request for N52,000 minimum wage to the National Assembly and provided justification for it that a worker and his recognised legal dependents would need the wage to live a healthy life over 30 to 31 days in a month.
According to him, it was out of labour’s “patriotic disposition and consideration” that the unions reluctantly agreed to the N18,000 minimum wage in 2011, even though they deemed it grossly inadequate as a living wage.
Indeed, in its editorial of December 6, The Guardian newspaper said the instant uproar by workers union against the state governors’ plan to trim down the minimum wage was understandable. The newspaper said: “The questions immediately thrown up by that suggestion have always been begging for answers.
“What, for instance, can the current N18, 000 minimum wage buy for workers? Can governors honestly seek a cut while they maintain their own lavish lifestyle? Should all the states be bound by a common law regarding emoluments of their personnel? And what right has a governor to remain in the saddle even when he is unable to pay workers’ salaries? In other words, does it not amount to failure of responsibility on the part of a leader, in this instance a governor, who cannot manage the state ship financially?”
It, therefore, stated that until state governors could submit sincere responses to its posers and specifically corrected multiple anomalies prevalent in their domain, they would not balance their finances.
The newspaper asked the states to diversify their economy and look inward to make money for their respective states and stop their overreliance on the federation account. “The bare truth is that the states are coming from a background of waste and need to return to productive governance. Expenditure must be synched with available resources… They must enhance revenue generation through cut in overhead costs arising from superfluity of political office holders, the award of bloated pension to public officials, payments to non-existing, or ghost workers, and other sundry patrimonial indulgences,” it said further.
It reminded the states that federal government could ill afford to bail out any state anymore and that would need to get their project priority right in view of the lean economy.
The paper, therefore, called for restructuring of the country, arguing that “true federalism is the only way to creatively unlock the potentials of the country.” It said the current system, which centralised the country’s economic and political problems would not do the nation any good.
“Many are endowed with mineral deposits, which they can exploit for solvency. Fundamentally, the laws inhibiting the independence of the state should be reviewed and expurgated where odious to the smooth running of public affairs,” it said.
Well said. But the immediate solution to the flexing of muscles between the labour unions and governors are not likely to go away soon, especially with the NLC now asking for N52,000 minimum wage. The NLC appears to be on a big collision course with the government, unless of course the governors allow the status quo to remain and the NLC is persuaded to jettison its demand for the time being. Then the nation can be sure of peace, even if it is of graveyard.
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