By Bimbola Oyesola, [email protected]

With the high inflation in Nigeria and the national currency at the mercy of the American dollar, Nigerian workers’ earnings are no longer sufficient to take care of their transportation to work nor cater for their families and pay other bills. In this interview, Peters Adeyemi, a versatile labour leader, lamented the woes and sorry state of workers, whom he said are now living like beggars. 

He warned that the fight against insecurity would not be successful if those in government especially in states yet to implement the National Minimum Wage still continue to impoverish workers.

He also spoke on the importance of infrastructure to national development, why strikes will continue to be the solution to workers’ agitation, impact of Public Service International (PSI) on Nigerian affiliates’ struggles and other issues of national interest. Excerpt:

Fate of Nigerian workers with the prevailing level of inflation

As we see now, inflation is in double digits. With the recent report from the National Bureau of Statistics, inflation, with about 22.5 per cent, is considerably on the high side, coupled with the fact that the purchasing power of an average Nigerian worker has been seriously eroded because of the gross devaluation of the currency. Right now, Nigerian workers are living from hand to mouth. Side by side is that quite a number of states have refused bluntly to pay the National Minimum Wage. So, the purchasing power of an average Nigerian worker has gone down so tremendously, while inflation, which is double-digit, is quite unhelpful, as the prices of commodities have gone up beyond the reach an average worker. NASU, as part of discussions on our National Executive Council meeting, has called on the Federal Government to do an upward review of the salaries paid to an average Nigerian worker. The high level of inflation and our currency must be urgently addressed. The fight against insecurity cannot be successful, if Nigerian workers are not well empowered.

Action against states yet to implement the N30,000 minimum wage.

Unfortunately, I served in the tripartite committee on the new national minimum wage as NLC representative at the negotiations. We had about six governors representing each of the geopolitical zones. With the exception of the Kebbi State governor, the other five were clearly not in support of the agenda. They were opposed to the new minimum wage and never wanted it. Ab initio, they never wanted to pay the wage. For them, not paying the new wage to their workers is something we know would happen. It’s so unfortunate that we have not been able as labour to picket the states, that even if you want to go and picket a state, you have to abide by the COVID-19 protocols. It was in the year 2020 that labour would have faced the states squarely since it was assented to in 2019 by President Muhammadu Buhari. Unfortunately, when we were supposed to start picketing the states, COVID-19 came in and was clearly problematic. However,  I believe that it is time for us in the movement to begin to ask questions, why the state governments have refused to pay the wage. With the level of the depreciation of the naira now, it is absolutely the right time to insist that these governors must pay. While some states are saying they can’t pay, there are states that have raised the bar in internally generated revenue, they no longer depend on revenue from  the Federation Account. I suggest that the NLC and TUC should meet on this matter, set up an agenda on how governors of defaulting states can be approached and some actions should be taken to compel them to pay. It shows the actions of the governors are condemnable and unacceptable to the plight of the workers in their respective states. Since the workers go to the same markets, they have no moral justification to deny them salaries on the new wage. Their actions are unlawful and unconstitutional. With the law backing up the new wage, any governor that is not paying is committing an act of illegality.

Devaluation of the naira

Related News

I’m not an economist but a labour man. But I recall vividly when this administration came onboard, they made a campaign promise that the naira would be made equal to a dollar, the exchange then was about N180 to a dollar. We need to remind the government of their campaign promise of making the naira equal to a dollar. Now, price of crude has started going up and hard currency going up beyond the benchmark, it is possible now that government has begun to access more hard currency and it serves as a veritable means of readjusting the value of our currency. Government must develop the willpower and go back to the drawing board. Naira must not continue on free fall, it is really going to destroy a lot of things. Drastic measures have to be put in place.

Nigeria’s infrastructural deficit

No country develops without infrastructure, that is the truth. Businesses are hampered, free flow of movement is hampered and even insecurity increases. Today, as we speak, virtually all the roads have collapsed. How do you expect farmers to bring in their farm produce from villages to cities? Apart from the problem of insecurity, cost of transportation has increased because the roads have totally collapsed. The problem of infrastructural deficit should give an average Nigerian and the government concern. Also, power generation has not improved. The electricity power generation firms, with the approval of the Federal Government, have jerked up electricity, making us pay more for darkness. Honestly, the deficit of infrastructure is not a plus for this government. There must be concerted efforts to ensure all the necessary infrastructure is put in place. Before now, we used to have road rehabilitation agency but now they are no longer operational. Some of the roads have gotten so bad that you cannot contemplate driving on them. If power generation is not fixed, if the roads are in a state of disrepair, you cannot guarantee anything. And the Federal Government is talking about privatising the airport. When you privatise, you expose the security of the nation. You sell to people who will not make your environment safe. There are certain structures in this country that you cannot afford to sell because the buyers could care less about the security of the country and care more about their profits. Government telling MDAs that are not remitting revenue to the Federation Account to use the revenue to fix roads will discourage those who are remitting to discontinue. It is a bad policy of government that is not well conceived and I think we should condemn it. For me, this is absolute corruption.

Year 2023 and Nigerian workers

I don’t think workers can play any significant role in 2023. Unfortunately, this is coming from me. I am not optimistic because, if we have to play a role, we should have before now started doing something. Even our own core workers’ issues, we’ve not been able to address them. In the last couple of months, there have been strikes in virtually all the sectors of the economy. The solutions have not really lasted. That is why I think that the two labour centres should come together to address issues affecting workers in unions that are affiliated to them. The labour centres cannot claim that they are in peace when their affiliates are in trouble. And because they generate resources from the affiliates, they have to do everything possible to ensure the affiliates are well represented. I expect that, if NASU has issues, NLC should come and speak to those issues, they must not be only interested in the dues that we pay to them. For us to collect dues from our members and branches, we render services to them and, if we don’t render those services, they will question us. As we approach 2023, I think it is important they address these issues, except they want a situation where they want the fortunes of the unions to further degenerate. The essence of affiliating to a labour centre or international bodies is for the centres to provide you with some technical assistance when you are in trouble. I talked about how to have a well-stocked research department in the centre of any labour movement because affiliates will not have the capacity to have all lost information but affiliates affiliated to a labour centre can go to a centre’s  library and generate information. When I talk about this, they tackle me that I am condemning who is leading the labour centre. This is the truth and I will not stop saying the truth. I pay N10 to N12 million to NLC, I need to get some services from them and not just paying for nothing. My members are asking that we pay so much to the centre but what do we gain?

Industrial relations as a way to create peace

This will end when there is sincerity of purpose on the part of the employers. In government, the trend of the strikes are more pronounced from the public sector, because, in the private sector, when you have a collective bargaining agreement, if you are going to vary anything there, you must bring the unions back to the negotiating table. In the public service, when there are issues, government will not even call you. You write letters to them, they will not respond until when you are pushed to the point of going on strike and, when you go on strike, they will call a meeting and try to persuade you that government will do this or even put a timeline to meet your demands. After signing the agreements and you go back to work, government goes to sleep and they do nothing and the labour leaders would have gone to their members and showed to them the memorandum of agreement they signed with government. And if those timelines pass by without nothing being done, the members will be agitated. For as long as there is no sincerity of purpose on how we conclude and deal with industrial matters in this country, so long would there be strikes. The only solution to incessant strikes from different groups is for government to deploy sincerity of purpose. Even if you sign an MoA in good faith and suddenly there are developments that will not make you to honestly implement the MoA, you call back the unions and tell them the level you have reached on the agreement and why you cannot go further or need to change the timeline and push it forward to enable us either seek approval of Mr. President or to get resources to deal with these issues. When you sign MoA as government or employer of labour and you go back to sleep while the unions are counting days and the period elapses and nothing is done, members of unions will begin to insult their leaders that they have just gone to sell out. I think, until there is sincerity of purpose on the part of employers and government functionaries in dealing with industrial relations issues, particularly in the public sector, so long would there be strikes.

PSI’s benefit to Nigeria

Our agitations have been driven by the fact that we are affiliated to PSI and we have been able to benefit from the research work that the PSI has been doing on quite a number of situations. We have been information by our global trade union organisations what we cannot readily get from our national labour centres. It strengthens us even in our struggles to get our demands actualised. Currently, we are doing re-negotiations in some agencies and institutions, which are driven by some of the data and information we are able to collect. For instance, we said there was the need for non-teaching staff to be represented on governing councils of universities. Severally, the government has said we can’t be there, but from the data and research work that has been done by PSI, we now have an avalanche of reports to show that non-teaching staff are represented in universities outside Nigeria. Across the globe, they have representations from the academic and non-academic. With this, we have presented to the renegotiating team and we are driving hard to push for it in Nigeria. We are of the opinion that this should be provided for us by our labour centre to drive the process of the renegotiation. We also have on record the effort the PSI has done in the fight against privatisation and local government autonomy. There are a lot of things that we will benefit in this affiliation. With the data and information, we are able to challenge government. We are also opportune to share knowledge and acquire information from our various colleagues across the globe, and better equipped in knowledge and approach to do the trade union work. The PSI has been of tremendous importance and has massively been involved in projects in our country and in the education of our members.