By EMEKA ORAETOKA
Government at every level can only achieve its goal of service delivery to the people in an atmosphere of Industrial Harmony (IH). Harmony is equally a precondition for high productivity in an organization. Since the President Muhammadu Buhari-led governments came on board, the country has witnessed a number of strikes, arising from past administrations’ inability to keep to their own terms of agreement with labour. Although, strike is a legitimate instrument which the workers deploy to enforce compliance with agreements, the country’s interest must be paramount whenever strikes are contemplated.
On October 19, 2017, workers of National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) embarked on a three-day warning strike to press for the implementation of an agreement earlier reached with the management. However, the Engineer Yunusa Mustapha Maihaja-led management curtailed it when it was barely one-day old. The concern of this writer remains with some of the inscriptions on the placards the workers displayed in the course of their protest. One of the placards read: “Maihaja is an electrician, we are humanitarians.” Some workers even called for the sack of the DG.
Nigerians know that in this administration, a number of industrial actions have been witnessed. In the strike embarked upon by Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU), and National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), recently, none of the two establishments called for the sack of the President. They equally never asked the President to resign or be impeached on account of being a retired military man. In fact, it is becoming clear that workers are using industrial action as a political tool for blackmail and intimidation of chief executives. Is it a mere coincidence that, days after the Director-General (DG) of NEMA, Mustapha Maihaja, said that the liabilities he inherited are being subjected to a forensic investigation, the workers called for a strike? Reports have it that NEMA currently has N2.8 billion liabilities and N665 million suspicious staff claims.
For instance, which DG will pay a civil servant N58 million claims without verification? Rational Nigerians can now see the reason behind the “humanitarian” claim of the workers here. It will be recalled that Maihaja inherited N1.5 billion as at April 26, 2017, out of which N382 million is owed workers, N1 billion to suppliers and tax liability of N90 million. If the strike was not political, why the hurry when the DG had said he was committed to paying, but after due process of verification?
The laughable claim by workers, according to the inscriptions on the placards they displayed, that being an engineer makes it impossible for the DG to lead NEMA made the whole strike a comedy. In the first place, working in NEMA does not make the workers humanitarian ambassadors. The only category of people that fit into this attribution are the philanthropists. They are the people that give without expecting anything in return. Somebody who works for his money, cannot in all honesty, be called humanitarian ambassador. Even in Management Science, motivation experts cut across different disciplines.
Anybody conversant with late development of management science as a discipline will agree with this writer that the reason was that it used to be a department in Political Science. In case the NEMA workers are not aware, Fredrick Taylor, the father of Scientific Management was an engineer. Frederick Herzberg, another Management, Scientist, was a Psychologist; Abraham Maslow was another person from the same background as Herzberg’s; he was not known to be a humanitarian. So one’s ones discipline is not a factor in managing a humanitarian agency. Much as I am an apostle of fidelity to agreements, I am opposed to the use of strikes for political purposes. It is gratifying that the management of NEMA responded quickly to what appeared to be a politically motivated strike.
I will say that instead of hasty industrial action that will not do the organization any good, the workers should have been patient with management, considering that the DG, Engineer Mustapha Maihaja, came on board barely seven months ego. Even then, seven months may not be enough for a thorough clean up of the agency’s financial records, considering other challenges the agency is grappling with. Government at all levels should endeavour to keep to agreements it reaches with workers in the interest of industrial harmony.
While commending the swift manner the Mustapha Maihaja-led management brought the strike to an end, it is advised that genuine issues bordering on workers welfare should be addressed with dispatch. Equally, worthy of commendation is the mature approach to the problem by the Hon. Sulyman Mahammed Sarkin Noma-led committee on NEMA. What the National Assembly should urgently do is to pass a resolution criminalising the use of strike to play politics by the leadership of labour.
A situation where strike is used to demand the sack of chief executives should be discouraged. After all, when ASUU embarked on a strike in the recent past, it stayed on its demands without calling for PMB’s resignation on account of being a retired soldier. Similarly, NARD in its own strike, only demanded for a better deal from government without introducing pernicious politics. Labour should not constitute a shadow government by introducing politics to strikes.
Oraetoka writes from Lagos