By Kayode Emola
This week in Nigeria, many of the essential services like electricity, water supply and many others were shut down due to the nationwide strike. This should not be a surprise to any observer of the economic situation in Nigeria. For all intents and purposes, Nigeria is bankrupt, run by criminals who will not give it up so far as the people continue to let them.
When President Tinubu was sworn in on May 29 2023, he was quick to remove fuel subsidy, float the naira on the exchange market but forgot to increase workers wage that has remained flat at ₦30,000 pcm (equi $20 in today’s exchange rate) since 2019.
That singular action of the president should have made the people living in Nigeria guessed accurately the direction of travel of the president and the country. Nigeria, a country of over 220 million people deserves better government and should expect to get nothing less. However, it has a docile population who accepts any rubbish thrown at them by their leaders rather than fight for their rights.
I wonder why it has taken the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) this long to call for an overdue industrial action. They had thought the people in government will give ears to dialogue but alas they have realised now that the men in government don’t care if everybody dies so far as there is still money to loot from the treasury, they are fine.
I hear a lot of people especially in the diaspora saying that the minimum wage of ₦494,000 (equi $330) is too much and that the NLC should be realistic and accept something in the region of ₦150,000 (equil $100). For me this is repugnant and hypocritical as this argument and claim that it will cause inflation does not hold water.
Firstly, the National Assembly members has less than 600 representatives and they have voted for themselves billions of naira that far surpassed the salaries of all Nigerian workers put together. I believe that the allocation going to the National Assembly should be reduced to minimum wage so that we can start the argument afresh.
Truth is every worker in Nigeria from the President to the least person in Nigeria should be put on a salary scale according to their grade level. Once that is done, anyone found corruptly enriching him/herself from the public purse or collecting bribe should be handed not less than 10 years imprisonment or life sentence depending on the severity of the crime. If this can be done, then we can say that Nigeria is being govern fairly and the demands of the unions are unreasonable, if not those advocating for a lesser minimum wage are the true enemies of Nigeria.
In addition, if we look at the Nigeria GDP per capital, it estimates that the average individual should take home nothing less than $2,449.59 (equil ₦3,674,385 per annum). If we divide this figure by 12 months, then we should get somewhere around ₦306,198.75 pcm (equil $205). So, I don’t see the reason why the workers salary should be sacrificed on the alter of inflation when the politician’s salary is protected.
It just shows that the Nigerian government do not care about the welfare of the people of the country and if that is the case, the it is high time we re-visited the sovereignty question. We don’t need to pretend that Nigeria is not working and that the country needs a complete overhaul, we just need to be bold to be able to say it.
We should not just say it, we should match our actions with words and take every necessary step to achieve true freedom for ourselves where the politicians are not just enriching themselves and leaving the masses dry. We should be bold to take concrete actions that will liberate our people rather than sit down to judge the poor Nigerian workers who themselves are merely surviving rather than living.
