Not Popularity CONTEST … Checking Strikes That Stink

President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), Mr. John Offia, on an advocacy visit to major political parties in the country was guest of the national leadership of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in Abuja, a forth-night ago. His main message for the political class was to help ensure stability of the university education system.

NANS concern was the bastardisation of the academic calendar, resulting in students spending far longer years in school than they  normally should, on account of incessant strikes. Bottomline: stakeholders, including leadership of political parties, who are also parents, should join hands in preventing not only strikes but those things that prompt such disruptions of the academic calendar.

The students intension was neither to vilify the near frequently, striking Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), for which students spend as many as seven years for a course that should last for four, nor the Federal and State governments known for their indifference to needs which often occasion strikes and their concommitant untoward  disruptions of the university calendar, but to convey to stakeholders the pains, frustrations and indeed indignation students and parents suffer each time the school system is in chaos.

In the case of ASUU and the Federal and State governments, the facts are clear that some of the strikes were products of long period of frustration by the lecturers on account of government’s reluctance to implement agreements reached with the former. Infact, successive governments paid lip service to the sector without properly weighing the dangers of keeping students away from school and the additional pain it inflicts on parents, particularly, indigent ones who cannot further their wards’ education abroad as would the privileged few.

But not all strikes often meet the basic standards normally set and  observed in civilised societies across the globe. Infact, here, in Nigeria Tanker Drivers, for instance, can decide to embark on a strike next day, if any of its members reports the slightest provocation of say, a brush with a ‘stop and search’ police patrol team.

Seriously, in the past many months, strikes of that kind have brought untold hardship on the citizenry, who have had to pay far far more than they ordinarily should for petroleum products, on account of the deadly scarcity, such avoidable impasse creates.

At other times, strikes are called for the right reasons but management of such protests become a major challenge and often creates security and economic problems which labour is often  ill-equipped to address. Often, such well-intensioned protests are hijacked by hoodlums who exploit the situation to break into places of business, dispossess owners of their lifeline, molest traders and even vandalise public property.

In such instances, the police would not be left with any other option than  to enforce security which often escalates what should have ordinarily been a peaceful demonstration. It is the avoidance of this that labour sometimes insists on a sit-at-home order, which when disobeyed by members also creates violent confrontation between enforcers and willing workers.

In the last nationwide strike called by organised labour, to protest against the removal of fuel subsidy, for instance, some state chapters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) either stayed at home or went about their normal businesses, while others created rostrums exploited by politicians to vent their disappointment and anger against the administration that denied them the opportunity to form government. What should have been a protest by organised labour against what it considered an anti-people policy was turned into an avenue to unleash unsavoury invectives on the nation’s leadership, in ways never ever conceived, or seen.

Placards like ‘Goodluck has become Badluck,’ ‘Go, Jonathan go’ and ‘Boot Jonathan out of Aso Rock’, graced television screens on daily basis in a manner that held the promise of enshrining anarchy and effect regime change.

The NLC leadership, in calling off the strike, days later, made the same point that its action was necessitated by the need to check the malicious hijacking of the protests by politicians for their own selfish ends, apparently hiding under the cover of being people friendly. While denying that labour was sponsored, in view of the free lunch packs daily provided protesters in Lagos and elsewhere, different forms of T-shirts worn by them and, above all, the jamboree platform created for top musical artistes and comedians to vilify government,  labour said it reached the conclusion to call off the strike in the interest of the people and for the willingness of government to shift ground from the N140 earlier pegged for a litre of petrol to N97. But by that time, many Nigerians were already fed-up with the long strike, which infact, was being  observed in the breach.

The major lesson learnt from that strike was that the decision seemed influenced more by opposition politicians and others with hidden issues to address with the government of the day than Nigerian workers themselves, a point attested to by willingness  of workers to return to work even long before the strike was called off. From all indications, many were virtually coerced into participating, while, few did so willingly, if the number of State chapters that enforced the NLC directive in the breach, were any leads to go by.

Simply put, while workers were not against total removal of subsidy on fuel per se, but for the lack of adequate  education and proper articulation of palliatives,  they did not consider strike as the most appropriate line of action. That reluctance might have stemmed from the appreciation of the prevalent security situation in parts of Northern Nigeria, particularly, at a time when government was at war of sorts with the islamist fundamentalist group Boko Haram. That was why many considered the calling of the strike at the time NLC did, as dangerous and inadvertently gave selfish politicians the avenue to advocate regime change, a fact which labour itself, rejected in its call to end the strike.

It is, for examples of this kind that most notable Nigerians think that strikes should be called, only and only when dialogue fails to achieve the change envisioned by labour. That, no single labour leader, or group of labour leaders should choose strike as an option in place of dialogue without inputs from the workers themselves in view of the huge cost on the nation’s economy, security and well-being of others.

It is true also that successive Nigerian governments have and could be out-rightly insensitive to protests of the people against certain policies, it still behoves labour to insist and place its reasons for protestations before the court of public opinion and properly articulate its position with its members before embarking on a strike.  That way, no worker is taken unawares.

Apparently, it is to avoid politically motivated strikes, the dangers of genuine protest being hijacked by hoodlums and selfish politicians and indeed the need to put first, national security, economy and well-being of Nigeria, higher and above individual needs, that Senator Heineken Lokpobiri (PDP Bayelsa West) Tuesday, March 13, this year, proposed a bill which sought to check reckless strikes in the country.

In proposing the bill, Lokpobiri held that strikes as contemplated by the Trade Union Act do not accommodate strike against the government except where government is the employer. Cited as ‘A bill for an Act to further amend the Trade Unions Act, Cap T14 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004,) the proposed law seeks to make provisions for balloting as a requirement before any strike could be declared by labour unions in the country.

Expectedly, many Senators found, in the introduction of the bill, another opportunity to demonstrate imaginary connect with the poor masses, and without considering properly, the merits and demerits, merely dismissed it as ‘anti-people.” Which people? When were the people consulted on the matter?

Yes, as Senator Chris Ngige rightly said, “these unions have their own constitution which stipulates conditions for going on strike,” it is clear that not in all cases are the ordinary workers of the affected unions given ample chance to appraise issues that could prompt a strike action. Often, it is a monologue by which a circular merely directs workers to stay at home after the leadership might have discussed and agreed upon.

In such instances, the view of a state chapter against the leadership’s position usually proves meaningless because it will be viewed as anti-union. Is this why some workers are often eager to disobey such strike orders as experienced during the last protestations on fuel subsidy removal? Likely or may be not.

Truth, however, is that the incessant strikes need to be checked as is done in other developed economies because the gains of such strikes are often far too paltry when weighed against the huge cost of man-hour loss, security breaches, economic stagnation and public infrastructure vandalisation.

Within the last three months alone Rivers people for instance, have lost count of the number of times Nigerians Tanker Drivers have refused to lift petroleum products for consumer use, over one form of strike or the other. Infact, virtually every scarcity witnessed in recent times, is without further investigation, blamed on yet another strike, a reason that underscores the fact that strikes have become an everyday occurrence without any proper check.

My Agony is, unable to air their views properly through their representatives at the National Assembly, some politicians now consider public protests and strikes as the right fora  to vent their anger against the government of the day, to earn an imaginary connection with the people that never exists.

Soye Wilson Jamabo

Senate President, Mark, NLC President, Omar.