Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, said at a press conference in Lagos on April 30, 2012 that everyone “must be prepared to march and halt the trend of corruption.” He was right. No foreigners or foreign countries will assist us to rid Nigeria of corruption. No country will make Nigeria habitable for everyone. 
Weak leadership has held Nigeria back since independence. When civil society looks up to leaders and sees no role models, when citizens look to leaders to practise what they preach but see the leaders violate the basic principles of their sermon, everyone gets the message that, in Nigeria, there are no laws, no enforcers, and no leaders with clean hands.
Nigeria is a country in which everyone competes to plunder the national treasury. There are no saints but many sinners. Everyone believes that what they can steal from the government is what they are entitled to take to their homes. It is this mindset that defines people’s view of crooked lifestyle as the ideal form of life to which everyone should aspire.
Despite his rare public rhetoric against corruption, President Muhammadu Buhari is generally, in practice, diffident about corruption, either because he sees the problem as too hot to handle or because he does not have the time and energy to commit to that campaign. No one believes the Federal Government’s anti-corruption chant. Buhari and his government have not inspired civil society or indeed anyone in the country. Since his election in 2015, Buhari has made constant but impulsive remarks about his determination to fight corruption in public life but he is not known to have tackled the problem forcefully in a focused, no holds barred, courageous, self-confident, and fearless manner.
This is where the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) must step in to be at the vanguard of the struggle to change Nigeria from a country deeply entrenched in corruption. As the country stands today, civil society cannot abdicate that anti-corruption fight to Buhari’s government that has shown apathy to scandals in government agencies, institutions, and departments. The NLC has clear justifications to take a lead position in the anti-corruption campaign. Every day, the nation is entertained with stunning cases of corruption such as the heist that was exposed recently at the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Incidentally, both of them are government organisations.
A criminal group that steals billions of naira meant for the development of impoverished communities in the Niger Delta has effectively condemned people residing in that region to a vegetable existence. No man or woman, child or adult in the Niger Delta deserves to be deprived of their entitlements from the oil that is produced in their region. Corrupt practices and misconduct by senior public officials and crooked legislators must never be pardoned or disregarded. As the legitimate face of workers across the country, the NLC must stand up to lead.
The NLC must not only view itself as a civil society that caters for the interests of all workers, it should also regard itself as the guardian of the nation’s conscience. The NLC leadership should play a frontline role in the fight against corruption that has undermined economic, social, and political development of the country, particularly in the current seedy environment in which the government has demonstrated reluctance to arrest and prosecute corrupt senior officials and politicians.
The NLC is an effective and active champion of workers’ rights and entitlements. That is why it has just issued a warning to state governments that are using COVID-19 as an excuse to abandon payment of the minimum wage of N30,000, including state governments that pay monthly salaries that are below the agreed minimum wage.
It is completely illogical for some state governors to use COVID-19 as a basis to back down on an agreement that was made between federal and state governments and workers. The reference to coronavirus is a flawed argument. In fact, logically, federal and state governments should be offering meaningful palliatives to help workers overcome the hardships that followed the emergence of COVID-19. This is what governments in various countries are doing to mitigate the impact of coronavirus on citizens’ welfare.
Why some state governors should use COVID-19 as a reason to abandon the national minimum wage is unthinkable. The wage was negotiated, agreed, and signed into law by federal and state governments, the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) that represents employers in the private sector, and organised labour represented by the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC). State governors do not have the sole right to choose when to switch off paying the minimum wage or when to reduce the minimum wage that is paid to workers.
The immediate past president-general of the TUC, Bobboi Bala Kaigama, warned recently that COVID-19 should not be used as a platform for some state governors to refuse to accord workers their legitimate right and entitlements.
He said: “The issue of minimum wage is a law that is binding on all employers of labour. Observation of the law in the breach is, therefore, illegal and will surely meet stiff resistance from labour.”
When labour and the governments struck the deal to increase the minimum wage from N18,000 to N30,000, I cautioned that the deal represented a problem postponed. In the current situation in which COVID-19 has disrupted the health of the global economy and, therefore, diminished the welfare of workers at various levels, the dispute over workers’ salaries should not be allowed to persist for long.
For a government that has appropriated the right to indolence as a way of conducting official business, the latest warning by the NLC may not quite strike federal and state officials as a sensitive issue to be resolved instantly. Ever since the minimum wage was endorsed, some state governments have breached the agreement. The warning by the NLC represents a signal that organised labour could no longer tolerate the game of hide-and-seek that some state governments are playing in violation of the minimum wage.
While many state governors find payment of the minimum wage an undeserved source of distress, workers consider the refusal of the governors to pay workers’ entitlements as a form of provocation. Tension is rising between labour and some state governors who say they cannot afford to pay the national minimum wage because coronavirus has undermined their economies.
Surely, the NLC, as a labour movement that is committed to defending workers’ rights, should not, by any means, be coy about confronting state governments that refuse to pay the minimum wage. The NLC leadership must learn to take practical and uncompromising action against state governors who act outside the law.
The moral question that confronts the nation is: Why should workers be paid salaries that are below the minimum wage or be owed months of salaries by state governors who have not adjusted or reduced their own salaries? The existing practice of owing workers their salaries or paying them salaries that are below the minimum wage is repugnant and unbearable. It must be contested by the NLC and stopped by the courts.