The above title may arouse your curiosity. It is indeed meant to achieve that. As it is in most parts of the world, today is the Workers’ Day, otherwise known as ‘May Day’ in Nigeria when the rank and file of workers will file out in different regalia to commemorate what started in 1886 as a Haymarket massacre in Chicago.

Characterised by organised street protests and march past by the proletarians  and their labour unions, May Day has its origin from the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago where a general strike for the eight-hour work-day by workers resulted in a clash between demonstrators and Chicago police, leaving several demonstrators and police officers dead. It was, however, recognised as an annual event  in 1891, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigue that called for international demonstrators on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests.

The International Socialist Conference Meeting in Amsterdam in 1904 ratified the position and called on all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to physically demonstrate on May 1 for the legal establishment of the eight-hour work-day for the sake of the proletariat and universal peace.

The conference also made it “mandatory for the proletariat organisations of all countries to stop work on May 1 wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.”

Since then, more than 80 countries of the world have set aside May 1 of every year as an official holiday, while many other countries celebrate the day unofficially.

In Nigeria, there is already a whiff of festivity in the air for this year’s May Day celebration. Uniformed clothes have been sewn, May Day cakes bought, dignitaries invited, while various venues of the May Day celebration across the country are wearing beautiful looks.

If the celebrations of the past one decade are anything to go by, it is obvious that May Day has lost its soul to merry-making and political patronage. Rather than serving as an organised rally that provides a good platform for Nigerian workers to speak loud about their harsh working conditions with a serious demand for an improvement, and to remember the fallen heroes who struggled and died for the emancipation of  workers from the burgeosie, May Day has been turned into a jamboree.

Labour unions appear contented with cutting May Day cakes and interacting with politicians who would offer them mouth-watering promises that would never come to pass. This, by historical convention, falls flat of the significance of the day. The festive garb the May Day has assumed is not in tandem with the soul  and spirit of the Chicago’s Haymarket massacre.

The general social and economic challenges facing the Nigerian workers are most daunting such that our labour unions should have used the May Day celebration to drum to the hearing of the government the need for not just a living wage, but  a better standard of living for their members and the entire populace.

For over a decade, massive unemployment has been the greatest challenge facing the Nigerian youth. Universities, polytechnics and colleges of education churn out graduates on annual basis without corresponding job opportunities to absorb them.

Casualisation of workers is another icing on the cake of unemployment in Nigeria. This has left many workers vulnerable to all sorts of abuses, manipulations and victimisation by their employers. The oil sector which is regarded as Nigeria’s economy driver is the worst culprit. In many companies, employees have to negotiate retrenchment and redundancies with their employers, while some employees are banned from belonging to trade unions.

Many workers, especially bankers have lost their jobs due to elitist banking reforms,while civil servants whose jobs are more secured live from hands to mouth.

Today, in the country’s pay structure, councillors of local governments, most of whom are barely literate, earn more than university professors. Even at that, many states are yet to effect the N18,000 minimum wage approved for their workers,  even though it was the fulcrum of their campaigns before entering office.

Today, owning a personal house is a luxury for a level 16 officer in the civil service, without external financial support or other means of income. Except in few states where government provided official cars for this category of officers, it is most sad and worrisome seeing level 16 officers, most of whom are already on retirement list, work around the streets with their ‘Leggediz Benz,’ as some would derisively put it. Little wonder then that these high ranking officers, after retirement, quickly surrender to poverty, without a car and a personal house.

In the good olden days of civil service, the accommodation and mobility of certain categories of officers, from level 14 to 17 were taken care of by government through housing scheme and car loan. These are some of the demands the labour unions should make for their members on a day like this. Beyond the annual rhetorics of ‘we are negotiating with ‘government,’ ‘government has promised to accede to our demands,’ ‘Nigerian workers will want to know from their leaders  concrete steps they have taken to better their welfare and those of their families.

If at the May Day rallies today, our union leaders still  dance around our welfare and dish out the salad of empty rhetorics that were features of past celebrations, we should all ask ourselves whose May Day are we celebrating? Is it the May Day for the long suffering workers of Nigeria whose living wage has been bastardised by the high cost of living and arbitrary taxes and who have lost their voices and rights to protest injustice in their working places or the May Day of the political elite and the capitalist entrepreneurs who have made us slaves in our our country?

Boye Salau