May Day: Concerning The Plight of The Nigerian Workers, By Umar Muhammad

Workers Day 2017 |

Last week celebration of the 1st May, marking the world Labour Day, a historic celebration of labourers and the working class that is promoted by the International Labour Movement, the day chosen to commemorate the Haymarket event which occur in Chicago on May 1886, and now remembered and practice world over including Nigeria.

The accompanying matches with solidarity songs and flags inscribing workers demands such as "increase our salaries and welfare", "improve our working condition", "pay us minimum wage now", and so on, is what greeted this year's Nigerian Labour Day celebration.

There is no denying the fact that Nigerian workers have been shortchanged and undermined over the years, this created a deep rooted anomalies in the conduct of government business in Nigeria. From recruitment, appointment posting and promotion, to the wages and increment there was lack of transparency and sincerity on the Nigerian workers by preceding governments. Nigerian worker thus is the greatest victim of the country's disorganized public service. The most cried meagre salaries and allowances not worth one's hard work and delay in paying same, and the discrepancies on the salary structure among ministries, departments, agencies and parastatals, constitutes the bedrock of crisis in today's Nigerian civil service. The high tendencies of corrupt practices lies with those that use their money to get employed, the greedy few elites and those whose salaries is not something to write home about and vice versa.

Today, the campaign in the mouth of Nigerian workers and their benefactors is, seeking for a better welfare packages and conducive working condition across boards. The expectations was that, salaries and allowances of workers both junior and senior, in federal, states and local governments shall be enough to help them cater for the feeding, house rent, transport, medical and utility bills, school fees among other necessities of life, but the fact on ground reflect a bizarre situation. This situation among others accumulated over time and turned the Nigerian civil service into corruption-based organization. The variation in salary structure of the federal ministries, departments, agencies and parastatals, the National Assembly, the judiciary, security agencies, state ministries, departments, agencies, and parastatals, state assemblies and the local governments did not represent what ought to be. As a result of this discrepancies, about 80% of the Nigerian workers today are living below poverty level, this category can hardly provide a very good three square meals a day for themselves and their families, effectively pay their children school fees, house rent, medical and other bills, transportation fares among others. Many workers have died while in service, and their beneficiaries founding it difficult to access their death benefits, and those who reached their retirement age and got retired are facing the same situation, this plunged them into an untold hardship with virtually nothing to fend for except donation from friends and family, loan taking and even begging in mosques, churches, markets, streets and houses. The fear of fallen into this unfortunate condition led workers whether in the federal, state or local government, senior or junior to engage in acts of corruption, bribery, mismanagement, squandermania and frauds, to accumulate wealth enough to cater for themselves, families, relatives, friends, well wishers and their larger society, the idea which is to free themselves from the shackles of poverty which might someday become a big problem to their lives. Unfortunately, it is only few civil servants getting such opportunity, the large chunk of civil servants were not opportune to get to where there is abundance of money to misappropriate and siphon, thus it's for the few privilege, the remaining roam about without schedules or any assigned role to play, this created a redundancy and thus undermining the core objectives of creating government establishments. Structurally, most of our working places are dilapidated, and was neglected over time such that today a lot were rendered inhabitable as continued using them might someday lead to loss of lives and properties, the condition of offices were not conducive for a meaningful and effective government businesses, and there are very scarce. The same problem with government quarters built to accommodate civil servants, the existing ones are collapsing, new ones were not built, with governments selling what remained of such houses the federation over, this made it difficult for Nigerian workers to have a descent and affordable accommodation. Consequently this led them to look for a rented houses which is more expensive with stringent conditions attached, which most civil servants cannot afford these type of houses and those that tried were were usually ended up being thrown away including their families and properties as a result of their failure to pay the rent. Our schools also were not left out of this neglects, classrooms were dilapidated and scarce, with teachers using overcrowded classes and tree shades to teach students and use same as their offices, this has been a national problem over time. Salaries of teachers were not encouraging, with delay in payment, this led to illegal extortion on students by their teachers in most of our schools. The rising abandonment of mainstream workers and admittance of Consultants degrades the ability of civil servants to render their services to the government, at the same time turning them idle, redundant and docile, this new policy adopted by some state governments is on call for, and a bad omen, it's damaging the core responsibility of civil service. These accumulated problems facing Nigerian workers overtime is the brain behind the underdevelopment and continued suffering of the Nigerian workers, and the continued neglects of workers demands by the preceding governments is what further deteriorates the situation. Strikes and other pro-labour protests usually fell in deep ears and unsuccessful, with governments sometimes using force to disperse labour protests, promises made during negotiations were hardly fulfilled.

Now that the workers using May Day to press forth their time long demands after previous appeals, protests, demonstrations, and strikes, the government shall logically look into issues raised, and fine-tune necessary solutions that can address the longing workers plights. Governments at all levels and sectors shall put workers welfare as number one priority, this will serve as a yardstick between failures and success, and a motivational mechanism towards achieving a set governmental goals. At the same time government shall bring about effective policies aimed at enhancing the general welfare of workers through timely upward review of salaries and prompt payment to enable workers deal with surging increased in prices of goods and services, provisions of affordable accommodation, and a conducive environment as working places for efficiency and effective service delivery. Nigerian worker is patient enough to be honoured, pay attention and fulfill his demands to make the nation proud.

Umar Muhammad

mumarlere@gmail.com