Last Thursday was May Day, otherwise known as Workers Day. Years back, workers looked forward to May Day not only for its fanfare but also for the powerful words from Labour leaders to those in government; and oftentimes, from the head of state and governors. Even in the military era, the military rulers did not joke with Labour because they understood the use to which its enormous powers could be put.
But gone were those days. It seems the general fall in standards in the country has caught up with Labour too, with its leaders not knowing the value of what they carry. One expected the Labour leaders to be more vibrant and more articulate in a democratic setting. Unfortunately, it is not so; and unfortunately too, one does not know what could be responsible for this lethargy (some say it is docility) – whether it is the usual everybody has a price tag or it is just that the Labour leaders are overwhelmed by the sheer weight of the challenges confronting their members. Isn’t it baffling that there is nothing concrete from the unions over the missing Chibok secondary school girls? Nothing concrete from Labour over the spate of bombings? Nothing over the various scams that have almost emptied our treasury, etc? Of course I understand perfectly well that Labour leaders cannot be divorced from the society and that a society gets the kind of Labour leaders (just as it gets the kind of political leadership) that it deserves.
But President Goodluck Jonathan added salt to injury while addressing workers at the May Day rally held at the Eagle Square, Abuja. “The challenge of the country is not poverty, but redistribution of wealth, he said.” The president was reacting to a World Bank report which categorised Nigeria among the five poorest countries in the world. He said further: “Nigeria is not a poor country. Nigerians are the most travelled people. There is no country you go that you will not see Nigerians. The GDP of Nigeria is over half a trillion dollars and the economy is growing at close to seven percent.”
“Aliko Dangote was recently classified among the 25 richest people in the world . I visited Kenya recently on a state visit and there was a programme for Nigerians and Kenyan business men to interact and the number of private jets that landed in Nairobi that day was a subject of discussion in Kenyan media for over a week.
“If you talk about ownership of private jets, Nigeria will be among the first 10 countries, yet they are saying that Nigeria is among the five poorest countries”, the president said. So, ownership of private jets is the barometer for measuring poverty and affluence in a country? Some weird logic, you would say, but that is vintage President Jonathan who only yesterday traversed Bayelsa bare- footed, for you! Again, is a preponderance of private jets just a status symbol, or is it also a vote of no confidence in public air transportation in the country? My submission here is that President Jonathan should cast his mind back to those days he went without shoes; what would have been his reaction then if any leader had said poverty was not a Nigerian simply on account of the presence of many private jets in the country? Whatever that is is Nigerians’ feeling about his logic.
Indeed, but for the fact that the president was amply quoted verbatim, and also for the fact that such statements are becoming part his conspicuous mannerism, one would have said he was misquoted. Almost every aspect of his speech is an indictment of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which has been in power for about 15 consecutive years. What has the party done since the return to democratic rule in 1999 to redistribute the wealth? Perhaps, by way of suggestion, I can be of help here, if the Bretton Woods expert/s and other financial juggernauts in the government’s think-tank have not thought along that line. Such a simple oversight can be allowed, especially in an economy where wealth is so unevenly distributed and government officials and politicians are some of the highest remunerated in the world.
My prescription: let the government give to every Nigerian (including babies but excluding those with private jets and others who are stupendously rich) about N5million each. At least we can start the redistribution from here!
But that is just by the by. On a more serious note however, there are many ways wealth can be redistributed without giving handouts to people: By way of scholarships to students, by liberalising access to finance, by making power available, and what have you. Obviously, the president either deliberately did not tell the workers or he conveniently forgot to add that the chunk of the wealth in the hands of the few rich people in the country is ill-gotten. From pension fund scam to oil subsidy scam, to all manner of funds that are unaccounted for, especially in the oil industry; the whole place stinks.
Of course, we can say President Jonathan is only being a ‘chip off the old block’ because former President Olusegun Obasanjo, his (now estranged) political godfather expressed a similar sentiment when he said years back that we cannot say Nigerians are poor because many of them, including even teachers, can now afford ‘tokunbo’ vehicles! But if the president must be told, this country can never have wealth properly distributed in so far as we continue to have the kind of scandalous jamboree like his National Conference whose participants get stupendously paid in a country where government approved a meagre N18,000 as minimum wage.
I do not know how the workers reacted to the president’s speech and in fact would not be surprised if some of them, including their leaders, applauded it as an excellent one. But I know that in those days, such a speech would have attracted criticism from Labour leaders and the workers generally. How could the reward of what millions of hardworking Nigerian workers toiled for be in the pockets of a few?
President Jonathan has spent the better part of his life in the south south region, so he might not be conversant with the proverb that “a rich man in the midst of six poor men is their chairman”. It is just that the poor hardly meet; otherwise, that would have been clear to such a rich man because he would always remain the one to be called to chair the meeting. But the earlier the president understood this fact, the better for him and the country. Part of why Boko Haram seems to have an endless number of suicide bombers is that wealth has been over-concentrated in the hands of a few for far too long. So, the situation demands far-reaching measures to reverse the ominous trend and not endless promises as usual from the Jonathan government which is tall in making promises but shot in delivery.
Nothing in the president’s roadmap out of the wealth-lopsided logjam suggests he is on the right path. Indeed, he may be working assiduously in the wrong direction. His charted course is rather long and tortuous. It is like someone who wants to travel to Ibadan from Lagos and decides to go through the old road when all he could have done was hit the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway and save himself a lot of time, energy and resources. It is time for the government to begin to work fast in the right direction to avoid a situation where Boko Haram would be a national feature. Contrary to what President Jonathan thinks, there is no politics in the World Bank rating. There is no cheating in photographs; it is the way you sit that the camera captures. So, the earlier he addressed the problem, the better for him, the government and the nation at large.
And, as for the Labour leaders, they need to go dust the books to see how their predecessors did it. Here, the works of Pa Michael Imoudu, Alhaji Hassan Sunmonu and Adams Oshiomhole, to mention only a few, would do. Not to talk of Frank Kokori, who was only secretary-general of the National Union of Petroleum Employees of Nigeria (NUPENG) but who many would think was NLC leader during the June 12 struggle. The times might have changed, the issues have not.
