For two harrowing days last week, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) subjected Nigerians to a national strike called mainly to protest the brutalisation of their president, Joe Ajaero. They were disturbed by the federal government’s nonchalance in dealing with the hoodlums who beat up the NLC president weeks ago in Imo State. Before the national strike, the unions had first plunged Imo State into darkness by cutting electricity supply to the state. They also promised to sustain the punishment until certain conditions were met. They held the state by its jugular. When those conditions were not met, the unions escalated the crisis to the national level by punishing the entire country for two days over issues completely unrelated to the other 35 states. Union leaders were unanimous over the issue of the brutalisation of their president, and everyone who disagreed with them or commented on the crisis had first prefaced their disagreement or comment with a condemnation of the attack on Mr Ajaero.
This writer refused to join the bandwagon last week of assuaging the unions. He commented on the NLC/TUC strike decision without first pouring libation at the unions’ shrine. Mr Ajaero was intemperate and his judgement poor, the writer had concluded. And by brazenly displaying partisanship and believing himself to be the embodiment of the union, the writer also argued, Mr Ajaero had attracted the insults and assault by the state’s homegrown enforcers. There was no dignity to his statements regarding the dispute between some public sector workers in the state and the government, nor was his boisterous and unguarded action in trying to arm-twist the state to achieve partisan ends defensible. Fortunately, even before the unions called off their strike, which lasted only two undignified and reckless days, Adams Oshiomhole (Edo North – APC) had staked his reputation and legacy by denouncing the unions for elevating local and even personal issues to a national problem. The senator did his best to smother his unease with the unions’ misjudgement. He didn’t quite succeed, for, unlike many of his dissembling colleagues and the pussyfooting federal government, it was clear where he stood.
Last Thursday Sen. Oshiomhole was on Channels Television to speak on the strike issue again, especially because he had raised a few eyebrows in his earlier stance a day or two before. Having been president of the NLC between 1999 and 2007, the Edo senator was naturally expected to be sympathetic to the unions’ position. But if he disagreed with their strike response, they thought he should be loth to oppose his former comrades publicly. However, on Channels Tv, the senator denounced the strike, deplored the trivialisation of the sacred instrument of trade union activism, and wondered why Mr Aajero was so unabashedly partisan to the point of even equating himself with the NLC. Leadership, the senator counseled, involved the capacity to sacrifice personal comforts and operate magisterially above the common level and routine indignity. He then delved into the beginnings of the Imo stalemate and explained that as a matter of fact, the fracture in the Imo NLC leadership, which the state exploited, was traceable to Mr Ajaero’s obtruding personality and refusal to let the state chapter order their own affairs.
What probably upset Sen. Oshiomhole the most was Mr Ajaero’s flagrant partisanship and absolute lack of moderation and restraint. The elections were over, he said, and commonsense required that everyone and every union, particularly the NLC which advocates better living conditions for workers, needed to support the efforts to revivify the country’s distressed economy. Many analysts, including this writer, had told the unreflective NLC president this truth many times, but he has remained intransigent. This is where Sen. Oshiomhole’s public rebuke of the NLC leaders becomes relevant. If Mr Ajaero and the TUC president who cried more than the bereaved last week still have the humility to profit from good advice, they should reflect on what their former president said last week. It is now more urgent than before that the unions must take responsibility for electing sound leaders. It is not enough to just elect fiery rhetoricians and hell-raisers; they also need to diligently assess candidates for leadership, men and women of sound judgement able to decipher the most complex of issues pertaining to labour and their wellbeing.
Sen. Oshiomhole has done the unions a great service by opposing their excesses from within, both as a friend and committed unionist. The unions should not wait for their enemies to undermine them. Outsiders could be more merciless. By denouncing the unions’ methods and rationalisations publicly and eloquently, the Edo senator showed why he was a successful union leader, engaging politician, and governor for two terms; and he is well on the way to becoming one of Nigeria’s highly impactful senators. He has done well as a unionist and politician, and from all indications, he will continue to do impressively well in anything he does. Sen. Oshiomhole is of course not a theoretician, and his ideological leaning, which seems left of centre, is more practical and eclectic than theoretical. But he has often effortlessly come to conclusions which far more educated public servants and politicians come to laboriously and without certainty. Not only does he speak very well and with self-assured panache, and is capable of sustaining his logic and coherence of thought over the distance, he is also principled, thoughtful and admirably consistent.
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His private ethics may be a different thing altogether, and he is also probably generous in his dalliances; but he is not alone when his principles are juxtaposed with the private scruples of his colleagues in the other arms of government. Sen. Oshiomhole will not throw the first stone knowing what his house is made of. And when it comes to such arcane matters as developing the next generation of leaders for his state or promoting a successor, he may exhibit weak knees and flustered hands. In fact, he may come across as less strategic and futuristic than his otherwise brilliant qualities would presuppose. But as far as public service is concerned, whether as union leader, or party leader, or governor, there are not many as gifted as he is. Even the self-satisfied Godwin Obaseki, the current Edo governor, cannot hold the candle to him. Indeed, whether the senator is deferential or not, he seems exactly the kind of man, party leader or politician who should have the president’s or senate president’s ear.
But will Mr Ajaero listen to Sen. Oshiomhole on how not to mix politics with unionism? It is doubtful. The NLC president will have to be compelled by union executives to clean up his act. He will not do it willingly; nay, he cannot do it because he does not have it in him to paddle the union canoe with the moderation and intellect it deserves and demands. He meddled in the Imo chapter of the NLC, caused disaffection in the state chapter as a result of preferring one over the other, and has begun in recent weeks to feel megalomaniacally competent to build or to demolish anything that catches his fancy. After the Labour Party suffered a crushing defeat in the February presidential poll despite exploitating regional and religious sentiments and expectations, Mr Ajaero took leave of his senses and began to whoop hysterically. His party’s candidate, Peter Obi, ever the rational trader, briefly abandoned reason too but quickly reminded himself that there was a future to consider, and that such a future could not be built on the parsimony that formed the core of his cynical politics. Mr Obi’s running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, for reasons unclear to both politics and science, has disturbingly walked the entire gamut of extremism.
Mr Ajaero is unlikely to moderate anytime soon, assuming he has the poise. He claimed not to hold a party card. He is just being disingenuous. He is as partisan as they come. He is a dyed-in-the-wool LP patron, and would as soon commit a felony for the sake of LP as foment a rebellion for his favoured candidates within the NLC. TUC’s Festus Usifo had always seemed a stoical and reflective union leader, especially in the early weeks of the Bola Tinubu presidency when the LP and Mr Ajaero, instigated by shadowy characters, tried to instigate street revolt against the new administration and democracy. Mr Usifo was unconvinced that the right thing to do was subvert democracy so early in the life of a new administration. But when he took up the gauntlet and led last week’s fight to redress Mr Ajaero’s battered body and image, it was thought that he was propelled by nobility. But when told that the National Industrial Court (NIC) order prohibiting the unions from protesting was still subsisting, he insinuated that the order could be disobeyed because the federal government was itself serially disobedient. It takes one small act or statement to take the measure of a leader. Mr Usifo has determined who he is. He may not be as recalcitrant as Mr Ajaero or as dismissive and conspiratorial, but it is impossible to imbue him with more than his ambition.
With more gifted and courageous polemicists like Sen. Oshiomhole, there is yet hope that in the cut and thrust of Nigerian politics, there will always be enough men and women who can be counted to be the conscience of the nation. He was short on tactics and strategies when he led his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), but he is not short on sound judgement when it counts, nor devoid of the chutzpah required to give counsels that resonate on the national scene. He has rebuked and counseled the unions under Mr Ajaero; it is up to them to listen and take corrections. If they will not, it will not dampen the enthusiasm of the senator, nor vitiate the import of his reproofs; it will, however, be on record that someone spoke up in good faith as the unions careened into the abyss.
