Since the struggle for the review of the so-called new minimum wage began, I have been laughing out loud in Yagba. Believe me, it’s not because I live in the abroad, insulated from the ever-increasing price of essential commodities. Rather, it is because for anyone who has lived long enough in this clime and paid attention to its foibles and fripperies, these struggles imbue one with a sense of deja-vu. In the words of our in-law, King Solomon, nothing is new under the sun.
Nevertheless, let us congratulate leaders Joe Ajaero and his co-labourer in the field, Festus Osifo. It is possible that at least, they have saved more poor people from dying needlessly from strikes that in the end achieve nothing or when they do, could have been achieved without unnecessary pain of strikes. President Tinubu has agreed that, as his elders say, you cannot make a fire meant to roast a snake as long as the snake itself.
Shame on all the abroad people who try to convert every naira into US dollars. We need to keep reminding them that Nigeria is separated from America by a gulf of seas, deserts and forests measuring nearly 11,000 kilometers. That is why, after photocopying the American constitution and jiggling it to help the kleptocrats always stay ahead of the people, we have nothing common with the Americans.
It is for this reason that those who try to compare America with Nigeria should be tied to the stakes and shot, preferably at the point-of-no-return quarters of the slave quarters in Badagry. These people make Nigerians think that they inhabit the same planet as their American counterparts just because both our youths take colos. We are as far apart as our English spelling of the word labour.
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Americans have surrendered land tilling to mechanised farming and the organic growing of food to the genetically modifying shylocks that would someday soon, dictate who eats or dies in any corner of the globe. But for Tinubu’s 150-day free import reprieve, most Nigerians would have died from tomatoasis which is a debilitating disease that results from the lack of fresh tomatoes in soups and stews. America stores its excess in silos and freezers while Nigeria dumps its excess on refuse heaps that create toxic gas that harms the environment.
So, kudos to our labour leaders for not throwing what is left of the value of the Nigerian currency into an unhealthy competition with the Zimbabwean dollar. With that, if these crop of labour leaders play their cards right, they might end up among distinguished honourables at the 11th Session of the National Assembly of ex-this and ex-thats of the nation.
If these labour leaders behave themselves, Adams Oshiomhole could rummage through his diary of labour relations for pro bono advice that would make that transition seamless. I predict this knowing that Oshiomhole does not need the consultancy fee. He is made for life as his trajectory from a local leader of textile workers to the headship of Nigerian workers, then governor; then chairman of Africa’s most populous political party and now as a very distinguished senator are not only well known but the stuff of legends. If Oshiomhole could beat Frank Kokori and the venerable Hasan Sunmonu to it, nothing would stop Ajaero and Osifo? In Nigeria, impossibility is only a cataract blurring the vision of fools.
Anyone who knew Oshiomhole in his heydays as labour leader would have wanted nothing more for him than to become a national leader. The Edo-born politician became labour leader at the opportune moment when Nigeria was just emerging from the dark shadows of jackboot dictatorship pregnant with the expectation of transitioning into a democracy suited to its continental status as a giant in the limbo.
It was the period when Olusegun Obasanjo, the military retiree that was pulled from the dark dungeons of prison was dressed with the unqualified scrubs of a midwife of democracy.
Oshiomhole seized the opportunity to marshal his comrades back to the streets for a chance at better representation and the annihilation of dictatorship. A few people lost their lives in those street battles for ideals ranging from labour relations to human rights. The enthusiastic streets responded in armed solidarity. In this interface, it was widely rumoured that Aso Rock was busy horse trading. It would remain mere rumours until either Oshiomhole or Obasanjo included it in their memoirs.
Fresh from the battle on the streets into government house in Benin City, one of Oshiomhole’s most iconic actions as a governor was harassing a poor mother hawking for survival on the streets of Benin City. The shock and outrage that greeted such nerve was so loud that Oshiomhole had to quickly fish out the woman for a well-deserved apology and rehabilitation from his verbal and authoritarian assault.
The rest of the acts of Oshiomhole, including how he became the first beneficiary of Edo’s only direct foreign investment; behold they are copiously transcribed in the Acts of the Governors of Edo State.
It includes how he distanced himself from the political party that bore the name of his first passion and how, as chairman of his party, he openly confessed pardon for any kleptomaniac that would join the ranks of the ruining party. Oshiomhole now sits among a group of peers as the senator representing his constituency silently waiting for the next opportunity at ‘national service’.
The Ajaero/Osifo victory is nothing to write home about. The new minimum wage was recommended by Kingsley Moghalu over a month before it was adopted by the presidency. Its trajectory is as shambolic as its resolve. The lesson here is that strikes are failing as a weapon of negotiation in a changing world. Even battles are resolved on the negotiation table.
Another shambolic take-away is how state governors, emperors of their domain that hardly pay full wages to anyone except their close aides were part of the negotiation process. Only a few of them would reduce their long convoys, their jumbo allowances for a N70k minimum wage without the cry that their states would become post-Arnold Schwarzenegger’s state of California.
Some of them are still struggling to pay the N18k minimum wage that Oshiomhole negotiated for federal workers as labour leader before he became a full-fledged politician. They would continue to do so with arrears hanging on their necks and a huge debt to be transferred to their successors and children unborn.
The organised private sector struggling against annihilation would never pay this new minimum wage. The vastest army of unemployed would only dream of the benefits of the e-allowances instituted by Tinubu’s predecessor and grossly misappropriated successfully.
The economy would remain in shambles because Nigeria would never generate the electricity needed to run a proper industry-driven economy. In the end, this agreement might have saved us from unnecessary deaths on the streets; besides that, it achieves nothing. It would remain a paper minimum wage dreaming of a struggle against a perpetually rising inflation. In essence, labour has won a paper battle, while losing the real war. It leaves Zainab Nasir Ahmed’s question – ina ake so talaka ya sa kansa; where do they want the poor to hide their heads – practically unanswered.
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