Hardball
In Kaduna, the wages of bully tactics and extremism is stark: a socio-industrial apocalypse that leaves both the El-Rufai government and the Ayuba Wabba-led Nigeria Labour Congress bruised.
At the end of it all, the workers carry the can. Maybe at the elections next time, Nasir El-Rufai and his ruling party would take some hit. But with more moderated temper on both sides, the result could easily have been different.
O my! Kaduna is clearly not for the faint-hearted! Labour reached for the fist of mail to smash the government into submission: no fuel, no planes, no rail, no electricity; and a surfeit of angry comrades to mass-parade and taunt — the workers are in war mood and they must shut down everything! The media too love the roar of war, real or contrived, with combative headlines to sell sizzling hot copies!
But El-Rufai, touted a bully himself, would be damned to be bullied by anyone. Labour called it legitimate protest and picketing. But El-Rufai called it economic sabotage and wilful attack on government property and premises. Pronto: the miffed governor, who seldom suffers fools gladly, declared Wabba and co wanted for “economic sabotage and attacks on public infrastructure under Miscellaneous Offences Act.”
The “charge sheet”: “KADUNA UPDATE: Ayuba Wabba & others of @NLCHeadquarters declared wanted for economic sabotage & attacks on public infrastructure under Miscellaneous Offences Act. Anyone that knows where he is hiding should send a message to @MOJKaduna. KDSG. There will be a handsome reward!”
As it turned out, however, the Kaduna government wouldn’t need that intel. Some moments after, Wabba and co reportedly took their picketing to Kaduna State House! Daring the lion in its den? Bathetic drama, if it were fiction, but it was real, in sorry and sordid technicolor!
Still, pray: how has any of these helped the workers’ cause? Indeed, El-Rufai has sworn the Labour challenge has steeled his resolve to actualize his public service “downsizing”; and would not succumb to blackmail by the “entitled few” to throw the legitimate majority under the bus, by using the bulk of the state’s cash to pay the salaries of a few!
Again, the message here is moderation, not extremism. El-Rufai must learn to moderate his message. He might have genuine constraints. But it’s a rocky patch out there, and no one wants to lose his job and livelihood.
But Labour too must wean itself from bully tactics: that penchant to bark, no matter what, that workers have a right to work, growling at the government to conjure money from whichever means, without bothering to find a middle point of mutual discourse to find amicable solutions.
Still, the saving grace — as Hardball stated on Monday, while it all started: the present drama is only a warning strike. It’s hoped that after the tempest and after all the posturing and counter-grandstanding, each side would have realized the limits of its powers and would wisely opt for dialogue.
Even then, some workers are already doomed. The nurses who allegedly switched off an incubator from a two-day old baby, to do a forced discharge in fealty to the strike, would have a lot to explain why (s)he must stay on at their jobs. Going on strike cannot equate throwing out basic professional ethics — and etiquette — with reckless abandon; particularly when it involves life.
But that is even the first line of peril, for the government is threatening prosecution! Then what, gaol? Great wisdom in a little bit of moderation!
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