The Nigeria Labour Congress clocked 40 years last week, with the landmark anniversary celebrated by a series of activities. It also provided an opportunity for introspection. No doubt, the journey has been a mixed bag of successes and somersaults.
Until 1978, four labour centres: Nigeria Trade Union Congress, Labour Unity Front, United Labour Congress and Nigeria Workers Council, existed as rivals, each an agglomeration of affiliate trade unions. But the then military administration corralled them to one umbrella — the NLC — with scores of affiliate unions.
With Hassan Sunmonu, its inimitable pioneer president, the union registered its presence as a true megaphone for workers. Besides Sunmonu, the mettle of five others in Ali Ciroma, Paschal Bafyau, Adams Oshiomhole, Omar Abdul-Waheed and the incumbent, Ayuba Wabba, has been tested. Since 1981, the NLC has negotiated four national minimum wages. The current one of N18,000 per month, which many states are incapable of paying, will be supplanted by an improved one in September, according to the Federal Government.
But apart from commitment to Nigerian workers, the congress, in its early years, was also devoted to creating a better society, a struggle that brought it in collision with oppressive military regimes. In the Academic Staff Union of Universities, National Association of Nigerian Students, Nigerian Bar Association, among others, it had dependable allies.
This was an age of intrepid trade unionism. The Ibrahim Babangida military dictatorship’s Structural Adjustment Programme that inflicted hardship on Nigerians met a rampart in the NLC, with its serial national strikes, which resulted in its 10-month dissolution. Under the regime of Sani Abacha, more trouble came. For seeking the actualisation of the June 12, 1993 presidential election won by MKO Abiola, which Babangida had annulled, Abacha dissolved its executive in 1994 and installed a sole administrator for four years. Its oil sector affiliates — NUPENG and PENGASSAN — suffered a similar fate. But labour survived these dictatorships.
Ironically, threats to its existence continued under a democracy. In 2004 under the then President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Federal Government amended the Trade Union Act in an attempt to weaken it. Trade Union Congress was thus born. The NLC’s crime was its opposition to perennial increases in the pump prices of petroleum products. Its fiery leader, Oshiomhole, was tear-gassed and arrested on many occasions.
However, there is a chink in its armour, especially since the post-Oshiomhole era. National strikes have hardly been effective. Wabba appeared to have understood that things have fallen apart, given his pledge for a rebirth — a return to the founding principles — in his welcome address at the event.
The NLC milestone, for instance, was held amid a fracture in its ranks. The 2015 national delegates conference that produced Wabba as President is still being challenged by a faction led by Joe Ajaero, the General-Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees. The fiasco would have been avoided, if internal democracy, unity and trade union ethics, which Wabba harped on, had been ingrained in its code. Lack of effective leadership explains why in some states, the implementation of N18,000 minimum wage is a debacle; and 23 states indifferent to the contributory pension scheme. Under the pension scheme, some states deduct contributions from workers’ pay and withhold them, while others have not initiated it at all.
Thus, the foundation of a life of misery and untimely death upon retirement is laid, given what those who retired under the old system currently experience. Arrears of pension and gratuity are not priorities in some states, already delinquent in their monthly salary obligation to workers. This mess thrives because the organised labour has lost its sense of direction.
However, labour’s degeneracy stems mainly from its growing apathy to lack of “accountability and good governance” among the three tiers of government. For evidence, seek no further than the Global Financial Integrity, a US-based group, which reported that $182 billion was siphoned from Nigeria and laundered abroad between 2000 and 2009; about 15 ex-governors corruption cases pending in court since 2007; and the N2.53 trillion fuel subsidy scam in 2011, which led to a reduction in annual subsidies to N971 billion in 2012 only after civil society organised protests. What is more, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has recovered a whopping N738.9 billion looted public funds in two years; and the salaries and allowances of our indolent federal lawmakers remain guarded secrets.
In societies with active labour, which complements the media as the watchdog, public offices do not provide leeway for their occupants to loot the treasury. But the obverse here is why the life of an average Nigerian worker/citizen is despicable. A total of $2.1 billion meant for the procurement of arms to fight Boko Haram disappeared into private pockets. In all of this, the organised labour lost its voice.
For this reason, Oshiomhole’s wise counsel, as its former leader and having also bestridden governance, should be taken seriously. Wages alone, he persuasively argued, do not guarantee decent life for workers where healthcare delivery is hopeless; teachers are perennially on strike; and education privatised for the benefit of the rich only. Therefore, he emphasised that a system can only flourish to the extent that those negatively impacted by it allowed it to thrive.
The labour landscape in the United Kingdom should inspire our own labour. Workers there embrace the political space not only for its members’ welfare, but to fight for social justice for all, or champion public good. When the Labour Party is not in power, it forms a shadow cabinet to keep the Conservatives government on its toes.
Therefore, a post-40 year NLC should retool and re-enter the trenches. In a country where corruption is allowed to fester, redundant and dubious workers, some of whom bribed their way into the civil service, are defended, the general welfare of workers will always be compromised.
