Before Oshiomhole is crucified… -By Kayode Komolafe

If Nigeria were to be a fair society, any minimum wage debate at this time should be about the rate by which the wage should be raised. The reality of the cost of living should compel such a just move by government, private employers and workers. Unfortunately, what is on the table now is how to defend the little gains of the National Minimum Wage fixed four years ago against egregious erosion by some powerful forces.

The governors say their governments could no longer pay their wage bills based on the current minimum wage of N18, 000 a month or N600 per day. But, one of them, a former president of NLC and Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has a different view of the matter. He rightly insists that the payment of a minimum wage is not a matter of choice but a   legal obligation on the part of all employers including state governments. By the way, Oshiomhole walks the talk in Edo State: his government   pays workers their wages regularly without violating the minimum wage law. And, of course, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is girding its loins to resist the governors’ attempt to veto a wage fixed in 2011 when the value of the Naira was higher than what it is today.

As a result, some commentators have been rationalising this retrogressive step of contemplating a reduction of the minimum wage. For instance, reference has been made to the “issues” thrown up in the contrived debate on minimum wage. However, they ignore the central question that the debate raises about the nation’s sensitivity to the growing inequality in this country despite the global awareness of the social scourge. Efforts to turn the economy around would not yield the desired goals if social justice were discounted in the process. Nigerian politicians and their technocratic experts are not listening to voices of wisdom such as that of the 2013 Winner of Nobel Prize in Economics, Robert Shilier, when he proclaims: “The most important problem we are facing now, today… is rising inequality.”

One highly respected columnist even says that Oshiomhole’s position on the matter is “dripping with sentiments.”  The argument certainly becomes unfair when the columnist says superciliously that he is “sure Oshiomhole’s ability to pay the minimum wage is not entirely evidence of his right-headed economic husbandry.” To start with, there is absolutely nothing sentimental in a governor telling his colleagues that they should pay a minimum wage which is a product of collective bargaining and the fixing of which is backed by an Act of the National Assembly. National Minimum Wage laws are no strange features of federations around the world.

The purpose is to set standard and ensure minimal decency in the wage system. It is not an imposition on the states as some have curiously alleged in the Nigerian case.  Pray, where is the sentiment in telling those who should know that they cannot elect to violate the law of the land? The fact that Oshiomhole’s government is able to pay its wage bill is an evidence of competent economic management at the state level.

The job of a governor is not merely to await his state’s share of the revenues from oil sales to pay his government’s bills at the end of each month. Legitimate generation of revenues is a component of sound economic management. Oshiomhole is demonstrating that much in Edo state. This should be duly acknowledged by any analyst of what a labour leader, Issa Aremu, calls “crisis of compensation facing Nigeria.”  Governors did not seek the mandate of their people to lament the problem of an insolvent state.  They were elected to solve problems especially socio-economic ones.

For clarity, what was fixed in 2011 was a National Minimum Wage; it was not a general wage review like the famous Udoji Awards of the early 1970s. If the process was distorted in the course of implementation the poor worker at lowest rung of the ladder should not punished for it. In any case, it is important to explode the political myth that all the recurrent expenditure goes for the payment of the poor workers’ salaries. It is not true. The emphasis here is on the lowest paid workers.

Rather than contest Oshiomhole’s irrefutable position, the other governors should be urged to embark on a more competent economic management of their states so that they could pay their wage bills   among other important responsibilities. For as the late Pope John Paul II famously put it: “A just wage for the worker is the ultimate test of whether any economic system is performing justly.”

Change: How Not to Proceed

right of reply

BY Okey Ikechukwu

Not surprisingly, some of Buhari`s newly appointed Ministers are contemplating national summits on their respective sectors. This is not advisable, so the president should tell them not to bother. Part of the excuse for the late takeoff, or near any takeoff, of the Buhari Government was the claim that the Joda Committee was putting together a clear picture of where the APC met the nation. That team was also alleged to be then plotting a way forward for the nations, sector by sector. When the Committee finally berthed, it was presumed to have sorted out everything, including what very specific things the government needed to do in every aspect of our national life in the short, medium and long term. So let no one start prancing around and making speeches about summits at this time. Nearly a year is gone and there are enough summit reports already and some of them are not quite 11 months old.

The nation has also had more than its fair share of summiteering in the last fifteen years. To say that our problems as a people and as a nation are fairly well known is only part of an obvious story. The other part is that the Civil Service has, over the years, made an industry out of purposeless or repeated summits, meetings and committees. The result is that there is, today, a subsisting disconnect between summits and the use to which outcomes are put. The very stakeholders to attend any fresh summits are the same stakeholders that attended nearly all the previous ones. The civil servants who would organize and manage the logistics are also the very ones who have managed several such summits in the past; and who refrain from advising there respective Ministers against such pointless but pointedly repeated inane outings.

What the civil servants should do now, to justify the president`s exaggerated trust in them, is to tell the very people the president recently described as `noise makers` about existing reports and ideas on their respective sectors. Let the President direct Ministers to assemble all such relevant reports of the last fifteen years, study them and distil useful recommendations for immediate implementation. The usual rounds of national summits, to find out what is wrong with the various sectors, is one drain industry that Buhari must shut down.

This is important because, six months on, the APC Government is still poised on a rotating platform that is neither a travelling devise nor a merry-go-round. Lives, nationhood, credibility of governance platforms and the possibility of sustainable national cohesion are all on the line. The government is yet to gain any form of balance, or show clear indications of its policy trajectory in key areas. Its reflexes, especially with the politics of its actions, do not show a cosmopolitan leadership perspective that is at once cohesive, consensus-driven or conscientious in its political economy of power. Curiously though, what it lacks in these respects it tries to make up for by the president`s repeated avowals of good intentions. But it is all becoming threadbare – the presidential assurances that is.

That is perhaps why, six months after it was sworn in, and with all indices of economic revival on a merciless nosedive, the government is still threatening to inflict a dramatic improvement on the economic and other fortunes of the nation. Yet it is not taking the steps it must take to make that happen. The roads to the objectives allegedly being pursued are all barricaded and are not even being contemplated. The year has come to an end, showing official records of government expenses but without a national budget as an intervention instrument for national development and economic growth. De-listings from major global economic platforms are coming hand-in-hand with other terrifying indices of a super negative crunch.

Meanwhile the president takes time off every one of his many foreign trips to tell the world that we are making progress. Since all the indices of progress are all in the red while the president is making statements to the contrary, it must mean that those seeing his brand of success are using special “nyokometres” do their insight. Yes there is now a cabinet in place, complete with brilliant rumours of a soon-to-be-seen dramatic improvement in our national fortunes. But rational human actions, especially those of serious governments, are usually girded and guided by visions of some sort. There has to be a `grand vision` to grand leadership and national development aspirations.

Apparently Kayode Komolafe, like some of us, is yet to see that grand vision – or even any vision at all. In his recent entry on this page, entitled “So, What is the Grand Vision?” the writer took a wake-up swipe at the Buhari government. His piece had all the typical trappings of a sober, leftist interrogation of a new order that is yet to convince itself, or anyone for that matter, that something structured and sustainable is afoot. He rightly queried the presumption undergirding much of what is going on today, saying with respect to Buhari`s cabinet: “… some members of the team are associated with some ideas (snippets of which cropped up during the senate screening); but the grand strategy of this administration is not so visible.

The Buhari team will have to summon all the creative energies at its command to articulate its grand strategy  … To talk of change is not say much really; after all “change” is a synonym for “transformation” … In fact, “transformation” is a relatively more thoroughgoing concept, ideologically speaking”. There you have it; and very well said too!
Make no mistake about it, the APC means well for Nigeria.

But it is in trouble as a political party and as a government. Its internal crises and contradictions are actually still simmering, further fleshing themselves out and getting worse. Unlike the president, the many factions within its fold are not thinking of Nigeria, except as a substrate they must get their suckers into. The party`s perceived disconnect with the candidate it fielded for the elections, who is now President, is another matter; and one that may be the ultimate undoing of everything they believe they have labored for. The very social ills of insecurity and other problems the party touted as what it would banish speedily with some sanitizing insecticide are blossoming with embarrassing luxuriance everywhere. Available statistics suggest that the last six months have the worst records in the frequency of Boko Haram attacks, as well as the number of casualties arising therefrom. The value of the Naira is on a First Class sit, aboard a fast-forwarded flight that is travelling downhill. Inflation is up and climbing.

Why, for instance, are we facing fuel scarcity at the moment? For the record, the experience is not new, nor is it of very distant memory. But all indications point to the fact of lethargy. The subsidy payments are some of the reprehensible failings of the last government, but are we really doing it right at the moment? Who is benefitting from the subsidy? Where is Kerosene sold for 50 kobo in Nigeria? Should people who collect subsidy and who then proceed to sell the products at purely commercials rates be allowed to be agents of double jeopardy for the poor and hapless? This government is supposed to present clear and incontrovertible evidence of a new trajectory. It is open to argument whether that is what we are seeing at the moment.
The other week the Senior Executive Course (SEC) 37 of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) met and briefed the President on the outcome of its one-year studies on the problems of education in Nigeria and the way forward. That document, along with the existing national Education Roadmap, which is available in the Federal Ministry of Education, is all President Buhari and his Ministers of Education need for that sector.

The effort of NIPSS comes up for special mention and focus here because this highest national platform for policy and national development strategy does not conclude its year-long programme without ensuring that the participants travel to (and spend one week in each of) several states of the federation, several African countries and several European or other countries for comparative evaluation of their methods, processes, gains and challenges in dealing with whatever problem is the institute`s theme of study for the year. The participants, usually 66, are chosen from key sectors of national institutions and subjected to a grueling programme of knowledge acquisition and self-development – as agents of change “Towards a Better Society”.
The President should, for instance, look at the work of SEC 36 of the Institute, which deal with “Industrial Relations Labour Productivity and National Development”. This was submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan late last year. That document offers the equivalent of a `final solution` to labour and industrial relations issues in Nigeria. But unless the insights and recommendations are taken up and implemented they would all be nothing but reports. The point to note here about NIPSS reports is that they always come with recommendations and implementation strategies. They are always hands-on and thoroughgoing evaluations of the problems or issues under focus, assessment of the experiences of various nations in dealing with the same (or similar) problems and what Nigeria should do (and how it should do it).

I believe we are on course, but I do not know in what direction. Komolafe`s asked: “ … why is it that   rather being reduced poverty has exacerbated in the land? He also said “The administration should provide a compass for the team to work with by articulating a strategy of development beyond executing random projects and contracts”. Gbam!