LABOR UNIONS AND THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS IN NIGERIA GEOPOLITICS.
85% of public servants may not have a roof over their heads at retirement and worse still the time the body chemistry takes a toll on each retiree and pensioner with little or nothing to bank on.
By Taiye Olaniyi
The moment you mention labor unions, what readily comes to mind is minor and/ or mega umbrella unions for workers. Workers especially in public service belong to one Labor Union, Association, or the other and are in content and context categorized into the senior and junior levels in public service. In the defunct Department of Post and Telecommunication and later the Nigerian Postal Service where I was privileged to serve my beloved country Nigeria meritoriously for 35 years, we had and still have the Labor Unions segmented into those of the Senior Staff Association and the National Union of Post and Telecommunications Employees for those above and below grade level 07 respectively. Once employed then in P&T or later NIPOST one hardly has the opportunity of volition not to be part of a particular union or association. From the onset, you are sort of conscripted into your relevant grade union by fiat in the monthly deduction of check-off dues. Most times, an average Nigerian worker detests such a deduction of check-off dues from the source without their consent. No matter how democratic the labor unions lay claim to, in many of the public service ministries and agencies, workers have no option to back out from being part of the unions and associations even when they feel like it. There is always that impression that little or virtually nothing seems to be beneficial to them by being coerced into their membership of unions or associations. The Nigerian worker's wages are nothing to write home about talkless of the paucity of welfare packages to help cushion the effects of the glaring "Cancer of the Pocket" which is now plaguing average Nigerian workers in the Nigerian Public Service.
Worse still is the geopolitical syndromes now dastardly introduced into the nation's public service such as the decimation of policy criteria, policy formulation, templates reviews, and their implementation to suit dynamics of change in the socio-economic terrains of Nigeria. Crude politics of religion, partisan politics, and geopolitical sectionalism all are imputed into public service employments, recruitments, appointments, promotions, demotions, retrenchment, and abrupt retirement of staff under the auspices of political rigmaroles in all shades of character. Ministerial and Boards membership appointments, the acclaimed performance of oversight functions by legislators in ministries and agencies of government including the unsolicited introduction of previously unknown nomenclatures of Senior Special Assistants, Special Assistants, and Personal Assistants either from outside or within a particular agency do mess up governnance and government. They similarly now bastardize career progression of staff and officers in the nation's public service to such an extent of the demise of esprit de corps was once associated with the functional harmony in public institutions in Nigeria. Political appointments and the characteristics that daily characterize the characters of especially the board members and committee members amongst the legislators that oversee certain ministries and government agencies are compartmentalized in juicy and/or none juicy nature where contracts and soups to lick abound but never their concern for an untainted service to fatherland. Therein lies the frustrations of the average Nigerian civil servant in Nigeria and their fears of the unknown future when they retire from public service due to age or length of service. In today's Nigeria, 85% of public servants may not have a roof over their heads at retirement and worse still the time the body chemistry takes a toll on each retiree and pensioner with little or nothing to bank on as life plummets now in one's face. The questions then are:
(1) Could the current political trends amongst the political appointees and Labor Union leaders stem the tides of frustrations and the general atmosphere of unproductivity amongst public servants in Nigeria?
(2) Would the current agitation for a wage rise for workers exclude those that retired unblemished under PTAD, PENCOM Programmed Withdrawal, and Annuity, or the pensioners be allowed to die and perish?
(3) To what extent are the Labor Union leaders true to themselves that they are productive in their various capacities and are vistas of light to other workers they claim to serve to be productive, faithful, loyal, and honest and to serve Nigeria with all their strength and to defend her honor and glory so that the one and only God we all claim to worship help us all?
(4) Would the Labor Unions leaders also help Nigeria and the current administration to help take Nigeria out of the economic morass, political despondency, and religious bigotry or be divisive under the platform of irresponsible agitations and strikes that may get Nigeria further rotten in corruption and divided Nigeria?
Contrary to the symptoms associated with average agitators and acclaimed human rights activists that, "Every human being is a born agitator but give him a pot of soup and he forgets his agitation", the question then, is, " To Be or Not To Be?"
In workers, Labor Unions activists, and governments as a whole it must be reinstated the admonition of a sage, "Today is Yesterday's Tomorrow, are You Moving Forward in Thoughts and Conducts?".
I remember as if it were yesterday my associations and official interactions with true workers union leaders, Alhaji Balte and Mr. Kumleng both of the P& T union leaders in Bauchi (1981-85).
Messrs Etokhana, Ajaero, Chuba Nwagbara, Mrs. Brown, Alhassan, Christopher Adewumi, Apeh, Pamilerin Adeleke Secretary of NIPOST Branch and Ahmed Ganzali of National Union of Pensioners, Gabriel Imafidon of NIPOST Branch and Barrister Adesunkanmi of Senior Staff Association of Transport, Communication and Government Owned Companies. Adesunkanmi was one trade union leader I greatly respect whose contribution was so immense in proving the uniqueness of the Nigerian Post as a unique organization during Orosanye's era at exploring that sanity prevails at the merging of the unnecessary proliferation of the Federal Government Agencies and Parastatals.
One would not also forget the erstwhile President of Nigeria Labor Congress Mr Ayuba Waba when he led the Nigerian Labor Congress to embarrass us in NIPOST over a trivial but then unresolved issue between the Senior Staff Association and NUPTE the two workers' associations in NIPOST.
Human life and times have something to say about us all, so as Bob Marley once related, " Good friends we have met and good friends we have lost along the way."
God bless Nigeria.
Taiye Olaniyi, a retired Postman of the Nigeria Postal Service, is based in Lagos