Now that a consensus seems forming around N62, 000 as national minimum wage (even if comical Labour remains marooned at N250, 000), what now happens?
Will organized Labour drop its visceral rage: throwing tantrums with senseless figures; and hugging serious economic sabotage by switching off the national electricity grid?
Or will it, for once, replace that visceral rage with clinical thinking; trash all Aluta delusions, and grab the best deal for its members, under very dire circumstances?
Dire circumstances! Yes. But they don’t refer to the Federal Government’s policy bind alone. Withdrawing oil subsidy and floating the Naira — with their bumper inflation — are very testy stages indeed, of the government’s painful economic reforms.
If it eventually gets it right — as regime friends hope — everyone will forget the current bind. Everyone loves a winner! — more so in a polity that lacks institutional memory.
If it doesn’t, foes — more of cynical, partisan opportunists with no superior ideas — would feast on it, in their bid to corral power.
That sobering scenario alone condemns President Bola Tinubu to getting it right!
But Organized Labour too is condemned to making things right with its constituency. For starters, Joe Ajaero’s Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has blissfully de-marketed itself with too many false strikes, for partisan matters, sans any worker interests.
The most hair-brained of it all would appear switching off the national grid — Labour’s rash muscle-flexing to browbeat everyone. So, what other jokers is it left with, if it were to reject N62, 000 — still a far-cry from its fanciful N250, 000 “last card”?
For Festus Osifo’s Trade Union Congress (TUC), it is unfortunate that the Labour Aristocracy allowed itself to be infected by the NLC factory boys’ economic illiteracy.
Pray, which serious economic thinkers — and Labour centers, especially of policy makers to which TUC belongs — would first bandy N615, 000 as minimum wage; then, N494, 000, then N250, 000, in today’s Nigeria?
Where will the cash come from? Or is TUC too, as NLC, guilty of “kalo-kalo” (gaming machine) thinking?
Even if you adopt N250, 000 for the least-paid worker, where will the confetti of cash, for the consequential adjustments up the salary scale, come from? How can the economy survive the hyper-inflation to follow — virulent inflation of cash sans value?
It’s not the best of times for our Labour centres. It’s a horrible epoch, in which history will jeer at them as core and comical economic illiterates.
Still, Organized Labour won’t be the only letdown. The state governors too!
Imagine that breed that was AWOL — absent without official leave — at the tripartite negotiations, only to be the first to bawl they couldn’t pay N60, 000, while the Federal Government and the Organized Private Sector (OPS) just cobbled together N62, 000?
That must be democratic irresponsibility raised to power 36! The governors — particularly the six chosen to represent the six geo-political zones — can certainly do better! They can be more sensitive to the plight of people that elected them.
The governors should please spare the polity the old cant about using all their states’ resources to pay workers, most times no more than 15 per cent of the populace.
If by subsidy removal they are harvesting cash — and indeed they are, by the sheer quantum from the Federation Account they now share — that cant is getting jaded, annoying and absolutely despicable.
The idea is not to bankrupt the states with workers’ pay. The imperative is to push a good share of the cash in their till, from subsidy removal, to the welfare of the people that elected them — workers and non-workers alike.
That is not too much to ask, is it?
Still, the buck stops with the Federal Government– even if the states (that holler “federalism!” when it pleases them) must also assume some level of response and responsibility in their local spaces.
At the end of the day, however, the Federal Government must manage the fallouts of its own policy, as the surgeon manages his patient, away from death to life.
That’s the promise of the economic reforms: initial pains, eventual bliss. But at the current pain zone, the Federal Government must take full charge.
Oil subsidy might have been a fraud that a few smart Alecs badly exploited. Even at that, citizens still bought petrol at either a high N100 or a low N200-a-litre belt.
If that has vanished for a N600-N700-a-litre fuel-purchase belt, it shows the quantum of money the federal authorities have vacuum-cleaned from the public space, into government coffers.
The imperative right now is to fashion out — and fast — how to push back some of these mopped-up cash into the people’s lives. The simplest, though by no means easy, is a fair minimum wage. The government must not make a hash of that.
But the more complex is investing in transportation infrastructure — rail especially — to drive down shuttling costs, as a total structural war against inflation. That would take some time to fix but the government should clearly show its aggressiveness and intent.
Already, there are compressed natural gas (CNG) buses and tricycles being injected into the urban centres. Though that’s a long shot, it could eventually drive down transport costs since it’s far cheaper than petrol or diesel.
On the petrol front itself, the pump price should eventually drop, with Dangote Refinery set to start pumping petrol this month. If the NNPC Ltd’s Port Harcourt Refinery follows by July, then local petrol refining would be taking its place to help deliver the reforms. That should save forex and boost the Naira’s parity.
Then, part of the subsidy “savings” should go into conditional cash transfers and other social safety-net schemes, which have suffered since the suspension of Beta Edu as Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation minister.
The same should go for the N-Power graduate volunteer scheme that the Tinubu order inherited from the Buhari years. It should get the suspended scheme back on track.
N-Power’s 500, 000 volunteers dwarfed the federal civil service, put back then at around 80, 000. Giving 500, 000 graduates temporary jobs, with retraining deals — as N-Power did — could renew hope and stanch youth restiveness.
Of course, the ultimate public transport investment must be in rail, for its economy-of-scale mass capacity that drives down shuttle costs.
Transport Minister, Sa’idu Alkali’s assurance that work is apace on rail projects is rather reassuring. Yet, the polity could do with the rail passion of the Rotimi Amaechi years!
To doomsday howlers, things are not that hopeless. Dire challenges are throwing up exciting opportunities. So, the Tinubu order should seize the times and make hay!
Even then, hare-brained Labour is welcome to further burn itself out for, on this score, history favours the president.
A certain Ayodele Akele (God bless his soul!) huffed and puffed, while Governor Tinubu carried out his Lagos reforms. Today, about everyone hails the Lagos success. But who remembers Akele and his Labour gang?
Yet, compared to Ajaero and own gang, Akele and co were a paragon of calm and reason! That shows how low Labour has sunk!
