Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and many persons, including myself, are rarely on the same page. The trouble is his penchant to assume that all governments, except his, are inept – that is, they have small grey matter or none. Last week, however, we became jolly good fellows when he told Nigerians the plain truth about why the economy is wracked and they are poor in the midst of plenty. That plain truth is that Nature has blessed us with plenty of fertile, arable land, but we are too lazy to cultivate it, are therefore hungry, dependent on less- blessed people in other parts of the earth to feed us, needlessly throwing valuable money away, distressing our economy and currency, the Naira, and creating jobs in other nations.
On the other side of the coin, Joe Ajaero, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, and Festus Osifo, his counterpart in the Trade Union Congress (TUC), were busy rabble-rousing the rustic population for a #400,000 plus minimum wage for messengers (office assistants, cleaners, and other low-grade workers). They would not settle for less, such as the #62,000 the Federal Government has already considered or the #70,000 outgoing Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has promised to pay. Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo have said nothing about what happened when the national minimum wage shifted from #18,000 to #30,000 about five years ago. They have not said that, up till now, some state governments, especially in the North, have been unable to pay #30,000. This has left these state governments open to the harassment of local and national labour leaders, formenting work stoppages,and crippling local
economies, which will inevitably impact the national.
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In this design, Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo have failed to recognise or deliberately declined to remember that Nigeria began its journey as a federal country, was degraded into unitary federalism by frivolous soldiers who truncated the “dreams of our heroes past,” and is struggling under the incumbent Administration to return to true Federalism. In TRUE FEDERALISM, there would be no uniformity of minimum NATIONAL WAGES. Each state would pay only what it can afford. If it wished to pay more because its workers are demanding bigger wages, the government and the workers would have to work harder to earn more money. Nigeria’s 50 million households are like that. No government can force me by law how much I should give my wife for housekeeping, how many times a day we should eat beans or bread, or if I must provide money for beef or original titus fish, all of which I can hardly afford these days. Were the Nigerian population not largely rustic, Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo could have been asked: From your calculations, how much more money does the NLC and the TUC intend to earn from a super bumper harvest of bumper check-off dues from workers’ salaries?
FRANKLY…
To be frank, Nigeria is not broke and should be able to pay reasonable living wages,”All things being equal” as economist say. We are not broke, but there is no money on the table. So, blind spending may upset several apple carts. We may disagree with this and ask: How are their Lordships at the Supreme Court going to earn about #5 million every month when the poorest man or woman on the pay ladder cannot earn #615,000 or #450,000 or #100,000 every month? The bottom line is the value of the worker. Can the minimum wage earner, (the messenger or office assistant, cleaner, tea boy or driver)perform the tasks of any of any Supreme Court Justice? Are their jobs not dispensable, as they have become in many private businesses? If matters came to a head, can the Chief Justice not clean his office or toilet? Do we not all do it at homes? Do I not wash my dishes and clothes? There is a mistake many persons keep making about MINIMUM WAGE. It is the salary for the least qualified person in the system, the SSCE school leaver who is under 20 and just hanging on a job to take him out of home before he or she goes on to the niversity or polytechnic. When Labour speaks of a man or woman with three children, this must be a 30-something-year-old person who must have wasted about 10 years doing nothing with his or her life beyond being a messenger or cleaner, in disobedience of the LAW OF MOTION. This natural law compels us to keep moving like the rotating and revolving Earth, the flowing air and clouds, and the waves of the sea, among other examples. A person who cannot add value to his or her life as he or she goes is a parasitic danger to the economy. It is the life of this fellow British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher refused to subsidise. FRANKLY, when I say there is no money on the table for exorbitant minimum wage for fresh school leavers who ideally should be on this wage, the story-line is this:
•Nigeria is the sixth-largest producer of crude oil on Earth and the largest in Africa.
•A mafia still controls the crude oil industry and market, despite the removal of pump price subsidies.
• The Buharia Administration took huge loans speculated to be more than $4 billion to be settled with crude oil deliveries over several years ahead.
• With much of the crude oil traded off, little is left for export.
• About half of the little left for export is stolen every day.
• The government thought of beating the Mafia by making the refineries work. It counted on Dangote Refinery, Africa’s biggest, which has a larger production capacity than all of Nigeria’s refineries combined. Dangote Refinery had been ready for work for six months but cannot get crude oil from Nigeria to refine and bring pump prices down. Even when other Nigerian refineries (Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna) restart production, they would have to buy crude oil from abroad, and this will change nothing in the pump price, making fuel subsidy still necessary. Couldn’t this be what we are experiencing now?
• On the sidelines, several licensed modular refineries say no bank would release money to them to start work since they cannot get crude oil to buy from home.
• The way things stand, it would appear that international oil companies lifting crude oil cannot be forced but only persuaded to give Nigerian refineries crude oil to refine.
• In other words, there is an old song and a new song upstream and mid stream in the oil industry. The old song says we have to import refined oil from abroad because the refineries are not working. The new song says the refineries are now working, but there is no home grown crude to give them. Thus, they have to shut down or import crude. That means pump prices will remain high at present levels, and an underground subsidy racket will protect against excruciating prices caused by global economic disorders.
Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo know this story. Why does Labour not think it is better for it and the nation to force disclosures on what is going on, even go to court if need be? Then, it would be a really fighting Labour, one cleaning up the country and the economy for everyone and not just rabble-rousing for the benefit of a few government workers.
SCALA MOTION
In high school Physics in the late 1970s, we learned that SCALA MOTION was movement without movement. What progress have labour leaders achieved for workers since, say, 1944 under Pa Michael IMOUDU, other than waging war on employers of labour for bigger salaries to better cope with the economic vicissitudes of a society down sliding year after year? Pa IMOUDU led what was then the biggest nation-wide strike for cost of LIVING AWARDS (COLS). From COLS, labour moved on to other humongous general pay rises, including the UDOJI AWARDS, which were meant to be instalmentally released but were unleashed in one go by the Yakubu Gowon military administration with disastrous Inflamatory impact. From then on, other general pay rises pushed prices up. Pepper and tomatoes sellers, like other dispensers of goods and services, being no fools, collected their own “award” from the awardees. Soon, the workers came back crying for more. Each time they got more, prices either rose alone or were accompanied by several job cuts. Is that where Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo are leading them again? If you doubt it, remember that today we have 1.9 million POINT OF SALE (POS) operators nation-wide. There are banking hall jobs outside the banking halls. In banking halls, they would be university graduates. Outside the banking halls, they may be SSCE drop outs or even okro sellers or cow sellers. The banks discovered their salary bills were too high and decided to shed monstrous weight. Before they did that, the banks brought in machines, which swept recharge card sellers nation-wide out of jobs.
Beyond their fortified POS, the banks now employ university graduates as contract staff who can be dismissed at will. Machines are replacing human labour, and there is nothing labour has been able to do other than push up the wage bill and invite more machines. Recently, a confused NLC and TUC have been fighting electricity companies for pushing up tariffs and asking them at the same time to increase wages. Does it not matter that electricity companies buy raw materials to produce electricity and that when producers of those raw materials pay bigger wages, they would transfer the extra bill? The staff of these electricity companies were the first to hammer down the economy. They were like children who did not know what they were doing. They were increasing the cost of production in their company with their demands and pressing for tariff freeze. If electricity tariffs go up, will they not pay more for frozen foods and factory products? Will they not pay their doctors and pharmacies more? Will the school fees not rise? Who will freeze transport fares? How much will they now be paying for gari, tomatoes, pepper, yam, okro, rice, and beans, for example?
NATURE’S EXAMPLE
In contrast to mankind, Nature does not go on strike. It harnesses all the forces animating the FOUR ELEMENTS, namely Earth, water, Air, and Fire. They give back to us what we give to them to cast our environment from. They don’t echo to us what we did not speak to them. Thus, the Earth forever brings food for us. The Air never ceases to flow, purifying itself of our pollutants. Are the rivers not forever productive? Crayfish, periwinkles, Titus, Salmon, oysters, etc have not gone out of circulation despite the immensely growing human population worldwide and their increasing demands on marshland, streams, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans, and all other water bodies. This should be a serious matter the work stoppages happy worker should contemplate. And FIRE? It is in the bowels of the Earth and erupts occasionally as volcanoes or earthquakes. If it cools off, the Earth would become unable to support human existence. Fire is in the sun and in the stars. If we move too near them, we would roast to ash. If the earth moved too far away from them, we would all freeze to death. An intelligence higher and more noble than selfish human intelligence is behind this Natural order.
Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo are Christians,. I guess in church every Sunday, they say the LORD’S PRAYER, making the following solemn promises thereby… “OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN, HALLOW BE THY NAME, THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN…”. Unfaithful beings we all are. We pledge our lives for the coming of THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH and vow that we are dedicated to HIS WILL being fulfilled on earth as it is done in HEAVEN. Funny enough, THE FOUR ELEMENTS are showing us evidence of this WILL in the unfailing provision of services to human beings on earth, and we humans are not taking a cue from them.
OIL REFINERIES
There was distressing news last week. About 20 potential foreign investors in the small petroleum refineries sector the government has been wooing re-considered their agreements whem the national grid, heart beat of any nation was switched off. Who will be the loser if they ultimately stay away? Capital inflow from other sectors may be hacked likewise. That would mean more jobs cannot be created in the Eldorado Joe Ajaero and Festus Osifo wish to create for a few government workers. If the private sector succumbs to the Eldorado, prices will go up. If prices are maintained to encourage sales, jobs would go.
REAL MOTION
Scientists tell us the universe is expanding. Labour should follow the footsteps of Nature and join those forces seeking to expand the economy. Can Labour not bid for modular petroleum refineries in each geopolitical zone and build its own filling stations nationwide? Can Labour not set up model large-scale town or city farms in the forests to create new towns and cities and reduce unemployment? Can Labour not establish model universities and polytechnics which address all its present complaints about higher education? Labour burned its fingers and failed in the Transportation sector. Where are the Labour Mass Transit Buses launched with fanfare?
OBASANJO’S SUGGESTIONS
In his intuitive moments when his intellect vacates the throne for his Spirit, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in the view of many persons, sees right and acts so. All of us are like that when we do not allow our brains to show us the way in any matter. We are not meant to be thinking but intuitive or knowing persons whose thoughts merely implement wishes of the Spirit. This, the former President would say last week that the major problem of Nigeria is that the food import bill is too high. In other words, he was knocking the heads of advocates of free or open borders and saying we are poor and hungry because we are too lazy to feed ourselves despite an abundance of arable land and one of the finest weather on earth. I agree with him. I salute also the incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who last week promised that Nigeria would grow 25 million trees just about anywhere by 2030 and that schools must be involved.
Since the inauguration of the Tinubu Presidency, I have been publishing suggestions on this page and posting on FACEBOOK at JOHN OLUFEMI KUSA on how Nigeria can produce trillions of pawpaw fruits and farm also trillions of rabbits every year to replace cow meat. Before I return to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, I wish to say President Tinubu should not limit the 25 million trees to ornamentals otherwise, they would not address the food question, reduce the food import bill, and make money available for important activities in the economy. In those FACEBOOK posts, I mentioned plantain and bananas as well. We are told yam and potatoes should be cheaper next year because many households are growing yam in empty and cleaned cement or rice sacks. Thanks to Udeme James, the front and back of my house are now like a mini-forest. We have yam, cocoayam, plantain, banana, vegetables. We are working on snails and rabbits. If Nigerians can see the Minister of Agriculture and his family working on their home garden, the revolution would roar. That was what former Head of State Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo attempted to achieve in the 1970s with OPERATION FEED THE NATION, which later grew into the GREEN REVOLUTION. We were not all hungry then. Today, the population has grown from 55 million in 1963 to about 220 million, while lands for land tenure and subsistence farming have given way to housing, and banditry, kidnapping and killing on farms have significantly silenced farming.
Back to former President…
Check the natural blessings of Nigeria and Ukraine, one of the countries which feeds Nigeria
• POPULATION (Nigeria – 229 million, Ukraine – 41 million)
• ARABLE LAND (Nigeria – 34 million hectares, Ukraine – 32 million hectares)
• IN PEACE or AT WAR (Nigeria battles internally with kidnappers, Jihadists, and bandits, while Ukraine has been in full-scale war with neighbouring Russia, a super power, for more than two years). The picture is clear. Nigeria is a lazy country. Consider also the following:
• Lagos State alone consumes more than 100,000 cows daily, most of them imported at an average cost of #300,000 per cow. This amounts to #30,000,000,000 daily, #900,000,000,000 monthly, or #10,800,000,000,000 yearly. This is homongus money exiting the borders. Can we not farm trillions of rabbits and millions of goats nationwide every year to cut the import budget, as former President Obasanjo suggests? The recipes are in the FACEBOOK posts at JOHN OLUFEMI KUSA. They come from the review of the work of an NGO I was involved with in the early 2000s. Former Bendel State military governor Brigadier Samuel Ogbemudia was the chairman, and former President Shehu Shagari the life patron. Can the NLC and TUC not present a budget on this to the nation to force down meat price, rather than rabble-rousing for inflation?
