Given that Nigeria pays out the highest amount of emoluments to its political jobbers in the entire world, its workers should also enjoy the same privilege. We should have the highest minimum wage in the world.
Reader, when we bemoaned the loss of history as a subject in our schools here last week, we forgot to mention that all the while, Nigeria continues to make history. All the time, Nigeria is adding something new or old to her story, creating and recreating all the time. First, let’s have the something new.
For instance, it is now official that Nigeria is discouraging her female folks from entering the political race. For many years, Mrs. Sarah Jubril’s efforts to become Nigeria’s president and turn our story around was not encouraged. Indeed, you could even say that she was positively discouraged because even members of her own entourage refused point-blank to believe in her: they voted for other male candidates at the primaries the year she contested. Who knows; she might have changed our history but I guess those members did not read history in school… And now, look what we have gone and made Dr. Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili do: she has withdrawn her candidature from the presidential race! I tell you, this country is too difficult for anybody to ruin – the people are doing it all by themselves!
Now, let’s go on to something old, such as Obj’s old letter writing habit. I have not read Obj’s latest letter to Buhari but I have heard the gist. He seems to have asked the president to close shop on his political career and go look after his health because he appears to be past it. I don’t want to comment on that as I don’t really like to leave my Uber-UN observatory post and get my dainty feet muddied by the political murk. I do have some reservation about the fact that Obj had two opportunities also to right the wrongs of this country and we all know the results of those periods. And I keep asking myself: has anyone really ever written any letter to Obj, apart from his daughter or his son, that is? How come he has to be the one giving out the missives all the time? Does he want us to officially title him an epistler or epistolerian? He should tell me so that I can open a library for his letters.
Like many people though who had the privilege of watching the president’s performance on a recent debate between the two political parties, the president’s performance really left me scratching my head. I tell you, the experience had me asking myself the question: what exactly did my parents have for breakfast when they had me? Perhaps, it can explain just how I came to have ended up in Nigeria.
Seriously, Nigeria has not been a good experience for me, I don’t know about you. Its weird and flawed systems have thrown too many people into governance where they have no business being. Not surprisingly, the results have made for a very awkward swallowing for all of us. I believe even now, the originators of the so-called Nigerian system are looking at all the corruption, all the non-functioning or non-existing structures, and biting their scruffy nails and wailing, ‘had we known…!’ Just look at the wage system.
I understand that the state council recently approved twenty-seven thousand Naira as minimum wage for the states, but employees of the federal government would enjoy thirty thousand Naira. As someone pointed out, this is a staggered system that will not do anyone any good because it allows for differentials. The question everyone is asking is, why the staggered system? The question I am asking is, why the staggered system? Oh sorry, is that repetitive? Seriously though, why does the government always have to look for someone to clean up its mess?
You know, and I know that we are not running a democracy in its real sense, thankfully. So, this means that we can pretend that none of us is wiser than the other. It also means that we can pretend that the government is erring in error.
There is no doubt that the wage story has had a very deleterious effect on the psyche and economy of the nation. On the one end of the pendulum of this country, more than half of the population (roughly eighty million, my estimate) live on less than ten thousand Naira a month on account of their educational and occupational status. On the other end of the pendulum, less than a tenth of the population (roughly five million) live dangerously on millions of Naira a month on account of unfair access to the coffers of government. A further five million live also dangerously on hundreds of thousands of Naira on account of their educational and occupational statuses. The rest are barely scraping by on trading, small jobs, cottage work, etc.
Granted, the wage problem of this country predates this administration. However, the failure to attempt to introduce some kind of reason into it has rendered it almost barren. To start with, inflation takes more than half of what one is given. Then, it is not fair that the workers in a country should earn, gross or net, nothing substantial, while politicians in the national and state assemblies across the country earn large chunks of the country’s gross earnings in the same month just for ‘sitting’. Might I ask: are the rest of us not earning much because we’re ‘standing?’
At the moment, the government is the largest employer of labour because it has refused to allow the private sector to grow or has killed nearly all the manufacturing concerns that kept the wage problem under control in the seventies and eighties. So no, we no longer have the small and medium scale enterprises that gave employment to a very large part of the population. Now, most people are working for one arm of the government or the other and the wage bill is now an albatross on the government’s neck. This is exactly as it designed it to be, and it is complaining.
So, in this bind, the government finds it must keep satisfying the literally bottomless appetite of its political jobbers and also attempt to appear just to the army of labourers who work to keep the country going. That means that there are two issues involved now: how it must pay its workers and how to keep the wage problem under control. It appears that the government wants to solve the two problems in one deft stroke, and thence eat its cake and have it by staggering the minimum wage. In the language of those of us who are not politically savvy, it is called divide and rule or speaking from both sides of the mouth. Keep the people divided by favouring some and leaving others in the cold, then they won’t be able to unite and fight. This is unjust.
If the minimum wage in Chad is $110 and $304 in South Africa, then there is no justification for keeping Nigeria’s under $100! Given that Nigeria pays out the highest amount of emoluments to its political jobbers in the entire world, its workers should also enjoy the same privilege. We should have the highest minimum wage in the world. What is good for the goose is also good for the …
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