I wonder for how long youth corps members will have to wait for their miserable allowance to be reviewed upward. This matter has been talked about several times, especially by the current Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig-Gen Suleiman Kazaure. One could feel the fatherly concern of Kazaure on this matter; unfortunately, there is nothing he can do if the approval does not come from above.
Kazaure raised corps members’ hope again last Thursday, while inspecting the NYSC Orientation Camp in Abuja: “The Federal Government is working to increase your monthly allowance. Therefore, wherever you find yourselves, conduct yourself well and be good ambassadors for the country. We received a letter from the Presidency through the Ministry of Youth and Sports and copied to the Ministry of Finance, which shows that the corps members’ allowance will be reviewed upward. This is in the pipeline.”
In Nigeria, when government says something is in the pipeline, it is often saying that thing may never see the light of day; it may jolly well rot in the pipeline. It is like when some executives say they are working on something when, in actual fact, what they mean is that they are not working on it.
For those who are conversant with how government works here, particularly when it comes to an issue like the minimum wage, tying the review of corps members’ stipend to minimum wage is government’s way of saying the review is still a long way from reality.
What we have is therefore a situation whereby corps members who are supposed to be doing national service are still being catered for by their parents. Parents who do not want their children to suffer during the one year national service find ways of augmenting their miserable allowance. In essence, therefore, it is still the parents that should be resting after going through thick and thin to see their children get educated up to the tertiary level that still pick some of their bills during the compulsory service year. In other words, the parents are subsidising their children’s upkeep while the latter are supposed to be serving their fatherland. And this in a country where there is no guarantee that the children would get jobs, lucrative or otherwise, after the service year! So, in a sense, it is not just the corps members’ suffering that continues even after the service year, even that of their parents too, because, at a time they should be sucking from the proverbial children’s breasts, the parents are still the ones forced to squeeze out milk from their dry breasts. The children often become disillusioned because the expected milk is not coming out of their parents’ breasts. A Yoruba proverb says omo lo mo omu iya on to lomi (it is the child that knows how succulent his mother’s breasts are).
This is most heartless; especially against the backdrop of the scandalous pay members of the National Assembly pay themselves monthly. It shows how far many of those who are ruling us are from God. This is also why it is laughable when some of them who are facing some of the toughest challenges of their lives are now saying they are enduring the tough times in the interest of democracy. Which democracy? Whose democracy? When people who for the better part of their lives have been like leeches on the system now find the vaults shut against them, they remember to fight for democracy. Democracy my foot! Let them go tell that to the marines! Where we operate a true democracy, people would have invaded the National Assembly (as our own Bastille), among other places, to drive away those who are buying and selling there in the name of making laws for us, or in the name of democracy.
But if the NYSC stipend is too small, it is only a reflection of the hypocrisy that characterises wage determination in the country. Salaries are small across-the-board, especially in the public service. Only those in politics have been criminally inventive in devising some other means of taking money from the public till. Even civil servants too, that some have renamed ‘evil servants’ because of the attitude of some of them to work, generally, are poorly paid.
It is only in sections of the private sector that efforts and achievements are bountifully rewarded. And the difference is clear; as many people would even tell you these days that government has no business being in business and should therefore vacate the business space for those who are well equipped to handle it. One wonders why government itself has not been outsourced then. Or, what is left when we are suddenly waking up to the reality that government can no longer do successfully those things it used to do well? So, instead of probing into the corruption that has thrown this incapability up, we simply pass the buck and move on. Yet, each senator, for example, gets nothing less than N13million monthly, more than what about 722 workers get monthly at the current N18,000 minimum wage.
Yet, it is the same government that is stalling the upward review of the minimum wage, despite the fact that it knows it cannot take anyone home. What this country needs are not public officials who will endure hardship because of democracy. We need God-fearing leaders, not the present rulers who are posing as leaders. A God-fearing leader would not have to be prodded before realising that because of the way they have messed up our economy, N18,000 minimum wage cannot take care of a family of four. How many of those who are dilly-dallying over the upward review of the minimum wage give such peanut to their children; some of them even have dogs that they maintain at public expense with probably 10 times that amount. Yet, it is when workers ask for a review of minimum wage that they suddenly remember that there is no money to back such demands. But the money will surface when it comes to matters of their own comfort and undue indulgence.
Before those conversant with my position on minimum wage take me up for making a volte face to now be advocating for review of minimum wage, I again restate my preference for good governance to unending demand for new minimum wage. It is true that minimum wage is reviewed periodically in many countries, but it is not the way we do it here, with very high margins in-between. Here, it can be as high as 200 per cent. Although Labour’s justification for that is that it has to be so because it sometimes takes as long as 10 or more years before reviews are done here. If workers are able to fight for good governance, we may not need to raise minimum wage by more than the percentage it is raised in other places. In 2004, for instance, our minimum wage was N5,500.00 per month. It was raised to the present N18,000 per month in 2011, barely seven years after. I do not know of any civilised country where minimum wage jumps at such progression in a seven-year period.
All said, we are not likely to conquer corruption until we know how to pay a living (minimum) wage. When we hear what directors and permanent secretaries earn, we know we have not started the anti-corruption war. These same people who earn peanut in spite of their big titles are still given the offer of first refusal in buying their official apartments upon retirement. Yet, we know that it is only if that perm sec had not touched his salary throughout his career years that he can pay for such apartment. Yet, we still go ahead to sell to him without anyone asking questions, especially since he is not permitted to have another business while in service.
Now, Brigadier-General Kazaure is asking youth corps members not to engage in electoral malpractices when drafted for ad-hoc election duties. Is it the person that you are given peanut that you expect that much from? We should stop kidding ourselves. These boys and girls, even if they do not want to be compromised, still have their lives to value. So, it would not be out of place for them to look the other way when election riggers, armed with all their usual weapons, are at work. Corps members had been killed in the past while doing their bit as electoral officers. How many of the perpetrators have been prosecuted not to talk of convicted for the murder of the youth corps members?
Let the files on the NYSC stipend review move faster on whichever table they get to. Pay these children reasonably instead of tying their fate to minimum wage which involves not just economic considerations but also has political implications. Those who are in charge know how to facilitate the process if really they are keen. This is not the time to bring out calculators that they hardly use for themselves. Permit me to repeat the expression I used last week: let’s separate Genesis from Exodus. In other words, let’s not tie review of corp members’ stipend to minimum wage.
