Comrade Issa Aremu, vice president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and delegate at the National Conference, spoke about contending issues in the nation’s polity, such as the comatose manufacturing industry, petroleum sector, the security challenges and expectations from the confab, the Northern Bureau Chief, SAXONE AKHAINE, reports from Kaduna.
THOUGH under different nomenclatures, several national conferences had been held in the country. What is the assurance that the ongoing conference will not suffer the same fate of non-implementation of its report?
Before the Obasanjo Conference in 2005, we had Abacha’s Conference in 1995 and there was IBB’s (Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida) Political Bureau Conference of 1990. And before Independence (in 1960), there were series of conferences.
So, there is no doubt that Nigeria has had its more than fair share of conferences. And legitimately, Nigerians can say that they are conference-fatigue.
Unfortunately, it has been a case of the more we see, the less we understand. Every conference’s resolutions had not been implemented. And from what I have seen, a preceding conference had more robust resolutions than succeeding ones, which had not been implemented.
I used to be one of those who argued that Nigeria was not supposed to be a debating society; we are supposed to be a working society. If there were a ranking in the world as to which country is the most debating society, Nigeria would be at the forefront.
With the conferences and debating that we have generated in this country, we should be a working society today because all the countries we are competing with do not do analysis by paralysis; or rather, they don’t do paralysis through analysis. They are producing; they are working: Indonesia, India, Malaysia and others.
However, some people may also argue that maybe it’s better we debate and keep on discussing rather than fighting. To that extent, after almost two months of the National Conference, one can see that there is also strength in discussing.
Four hundred and ninety-five delegates of diverse backgrounds: labour, religions, economists, businesses, traditional rulers, ethnic nationalities are assembled to discuss the way forward.
In the first two weeks, all the body languages came up when we were debating the President’s inaugural address. Now, if they couldn’t have avenue to vent this kind of anger, you can imagine where we would have dissipated the energy. It (conference) may be in chaos.
It was good that we had a platform for people to let off their steam and discuss. And I think some of the ideas coming from this conference are novel to transform Nigeria. If we can do the quality control of these ideas, they could be transformed into policies.
The challenge is for President Jonathan to show that this conference would be of a difference. That we would not only spend time and resources to generate ideas, but we would also have enough time to get them implemented for the purpose of national development.
So, while I strongly believe that we cannot continue to be a debating society, we have to be a working society. I still believe that it is better we debate, as we are doing, than engaging in a war of attrition such as is going on in the Central African Republic and Southern Sudan.
It is better we are doing what we are doing here now. Yet, at the end of the day, what Nigerians are looking for is uninterrupted power supply, goods and services, to move from this unemployment situation to full employment for our citizens. Thus, I am optimistic that this conference would be different.
I also realised that we must also change our mindset. There is a mindset mentality that we carry from military rule. Because we were caged, we had no liberty, and no constitutional rights, we depended on the government to do and undo.
In a sound democracy, citizens must make sure that resolutions are not just made, but they must be implemented. So, we can’t leave this conference to the mercy of the government alone; we, too, must insist that the resolutions should be implemented.
And there should be new round of pressure for protests. Just like this conference came up through protests, the issue of implementation of its resolution must go through that pressure.
The unions are fighting the National Conference the same way they had fought against attempts by the National Assembly to remove labour matters from the Excusive Legislative List in the constitution. Can the confab resolve the problem?
I think we have crossed the bridge. The laws on labour issues must be federally passed because it should be on the Exclusive List. There could be complementary state legislation and not less.
What is the philosophy there? Labour is an important factor of production. In fact, it is the most important factor of production. And for you to motivate labour for development, for productivity, you must handle it at the national level.
What I am talking about is that hours of work are already fixed. Nigeria is a signatory to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and labour issues are not just a local affair; it is international.
Most of the labour laws in the countries of the world are guided by conventions that countries have ratified at the level of ILO, which is the oldest agency of the United Nations (UN) set up as far back as 1919.
Now, take the hours of work. Today, Nigeria’s labour laws are clear that every worker must work for eight hours. After eight hours, you are entitled to over-time. Before Nigeria was a signatory to make that law, under colonial rule, it was slave labour. You could work for 10, 15 or 20 hours without pay.
There is a minimum standard now of eight hours and this was what led to the struggle for May Day. In 1886, the American workers in Chicago fought to enforce eight hours.
The import of this is that some countries today do not have progressive laws like ours. In some parts of China, Pakistan and Bangladesh, workers still work for about 15 hours. They are being treated like slaves and that is why you see that a lot of struggle is going on in those places.
Now, we also have laws that say if you have to set up factories, you must also ensure and comply with minimum safety standards. In the case of fire outbreak, you must provide the gadgets to put off fires so that workers would not be affected adversely.
There is also the Nigerian Labour Act, which regulates conflicts because labour could also be in crisis; there could be strikes. We have labour laws that say there must be dispute resolution, mediation, and arbitration and so on; and there are special courts that handle labour issues. These are federal courts and not state courts.
The vision of the founding fathers of Nigeria is that they see labour as a rallying point for Nigerians. And so, conflicts in labour cannot be left like any other conflict, whose resolution could go as far as the Supreme Court. Thus, conflicts can be resolved as soon as possible so that production can resume. That is why they are under federal laws.
We also have laws for minimum wage and minimum pension. It is federal law that ensures that no Nigerian worker should earn below N18,000 as minimum wage. Therefore, any investor, be it Chinese or whoever that comes to Nigeria must comply with the minimum wage law, and then, you must pay minimum pension.
Accordingly, our major laws guide dispute resolution, absenteeism, maternity, and others. For instance, under laws guiding maternity, women also have rights to have children. They are not only there for production, but they are also to produce future workers.
Hence, it is legitimate that workers should be married and be pregnant to have children. And when they are in pregnancy, you pay them their full pay. If there were no such laws, some banks would not want their workers to get married, not to talk of having children.
Now, we have those minimum protections and that makes Nigeria to be one of the progressive countries of the world. Still, some forces want to reverse them. They want states to make laws on labour. If some of them have their way, there would be customary laws on labour matters and that would be confusion.
What we are saying is that you don’t remove labour laws from the Exclusive List of the federal; there would be chaos and confusion. States can have, for example, their separate minimum wage but it should not fall short of the federal. That is, states can improve on the minimum wage but they cannot pay less.
The bottom line is that federal should legislate on labour laws because labour is a factor of production that you need to motivate for productivity. If we allow it to be deregulated to states and the local government level, there would be confusion; there would not be minimum standard.
And if investors come around, we would be dealing with multiple labour laws and that would amount to serious confusion, which would not be beneficial to the country. But some people don’t see it that way; they just see to it at the level that they cannot pay minimum wage.
If at the central level you are having problems managing labour, can you imagine what would happen when we deregulate labour?
What we are saying is that we don’t have trouble with the National Assembly as a whole on this issue. The only problem we had was the Senate, and after our protest, the Senate had concurred. It had agreed that there was initial misinformation, and it realised that labour is too important to be removed from the Exclusive List.
But why has the problem resurfaced at the National Conference?
Unfortunately, the forces that lost the constitutional amendment used the state governors, excluding Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, and they are trying to use sub-committees of the National Conference to bring back the issue of removing labour laws from the Exclusive List.
Precisely, the latest is the Committee on the Devolution of Power, led by (former Governor) Victor Attah and (former Inspector General of Police) Alhaji Ibrahim Coomasie. The argument they are canvassing is that they are trying to devolve power.
They said the powers under the Federal Government are enormous. They said there are about 90 issues that the Federal Government is legislating on and they want to devolve powers by giving some to the states. And one of the items I found ridiculous that they picked is labour.
I think it is time the Nigerian debate moved from dogma to critical issues of serious discussion. If about five years ago you said that the powers of the Federal Government were too enormous, that may make sense.
ISN’T it debatable to say that the powers of the Federal Government are too numerous, as it’s being canvassed at the conference?
With the problem of insecurity in which the state governments in the Northeast zone have been so overwhelmed, and with the power of the military such that the Federal Government of Nigeria has been seemingly overwhelmed such that we have to cry to the global community, can we really say that the powers of the Federal Government are too enormous? In fact, the power is too weak.
With the security of the country today, it is clear that all of us are under threat. It is not just the Nigerian Army, Nigeria Police, and the State Security Services but all of us have to take blames such that we now have to go abroad seeking for support.
I share the observation of Archbishop Onaiyekan that we are all ashamed, as Nigerians, that with the enormous power we attached to ourselves, we are powerless to check local insurgency.
Against this background, I think it is completely ridiculous for anybody to still be repeating this mantra. I think the Federal Government power is not about whether it is enormous; it is about the quality of the power, and it is weak from what we have seen with its engagement with terror.
Would you say Nigeria’s military has failed to deliver considering the intervention of foreign troops to assist in rescuing the abducted schoolgirls, and tackling insurgency in general in the country?
The key word is Nigeria, not necessarily the Army or security agencies. As referred above, Archbishop Onaiyekan said we all should be ashamed as Nigerians, as we could not face a singular and local security challenge. So, all of are diminished by this crisis — not just the security agencies, but also all of us.
And why is it so? It is not so much of the kidnapping of the
Chibok schoolgirls; the kidnapping only increases the noise level of the insecurity. Now, we are talking of 230 of the kidnapped girls, but you know that there had been one, two, three of such cases before then. Not only that we got serial bombings, the latest one, Nyanya has part one and part two.
The issue is not apprehending these criminals; the issue is that this heinous crime ever happened in the first instance. For me, the real embarrassment is that we could not prevent serial assaults on our collective security, not just once but twice in the federal capital.
What is the position of Labour on the speculations that the Federal Government may soon increase the prices of petroleum products in the country?
I think it is important for us to move to the issue of reality. At the last Presidential Media Chat, it was commendable that President Goodluck Jonathan said categorically that he wasn’t committed to a new regime of price increases.
As a matter of fact, he said that for now, he is not increasing the petroleum price or price of petroleum products. And I think we should take him for that. He went further to make the call that whoever is selling above the official price is unacceptable and criminal. For me, nothing would be more reassuring for all Nigerians. I think he bought into the feelings of Nigerians.
However, I think it would be the height of insensitivity on the part of any government or government officials at all levels to be pushing for any policy that will further lead to economic insecurity for Nigerians at a time we are facing the problem of physical insecurity.
The President’s statement is a complete departure from the busybody attitudes of State Commissioners for Finance, who went to Abuja to make a case for fuel price increase and for the removal of the so-called subsidy on petroleum products even though their trips were subsidised to Abuja.
I am also happy that one of the suggestions canvassed at the World
Economic Forum (WEF) was that Nigerians need social protection to get out of the economic crisis in the country. I mean, we rebased the GDP of Nigeria, which has made us to become the leading economy in Africa.
This is a paradox! We have an army of the unemployed youths and poor people. I mean, this is a time for social protection for Nigerians, as articulated by the President at the WEF. And you can give social protection when you are removing the so-called subsidy, which would mean high price of fuel for Nigerians.
I think it is also time that all the stakeholders in Nigeria started thinking outside the box of removal of subsidy and so on. I think we need thinking on how to reinvent the petroleum downstream sector. And this is the time for us to be talking of passing the Petroleum Industry Bill
(PIB).
We all need new thinking coming into that sector. We want the PIB to be passed. If it’s done, we are talking of unbundling 11 new companies in that sector, which can engage and employ people.
The PIB also talk of reinvestment in that sector with a view to not only bringing back the old refineries, but also attracting new entrants to build more refineries. It also talks about how to stop the leakages in which today we are talking of thousands of barrels of crude oil being stolen. So, we need something that can stop these leakages. These are the stories we want to hear.
One thing I want to add is that there is nothing inherently good in deregulation, but there is something inherently good in regulation of any product or service. All these are means they are not the ends. The end Nigerians are looking for is uninterrupted power supply, communication and service delivery.
Let me leave you with this imagination. We have deregulated the telecommunication sector; a lot of mobile lines are available, but good services are hardly available. What is the quality of the service? It is more of quantity than quality. And why is it so? It is because the government is not on duty.
What I am saying is that deregulation is not a substitute for good governance. That is why I am happy that the President said during his media chat that whether it is fixed price or not, the pump price for fuel (petrol) is still N97 per litre. Whoever operates outside that is a criminal and it is punishable.
My stand is that somebody must be on duty to implement the policy; and deregulation or removal of subsidy is no substitute for good governance. In fact, for the market to function, government must be on duty.
But what is happening today is that you cannot even talk of serious market in the petroleum sector because we are importing fuel from abroad. The market is highly distorted. Most of what we are paying for is transport cost, not even the product cost until we fix the refineries before we know the factory price.
In summary, I am excited that the President is not willing to add to Nigerians’ burden at this material time by increasing petroleum products’ prices. He alone has enough burdens to shoulder at the moment; he cannot combine physical insecurity with other social insecurities, which the so-call the removal of subsidy would engender.
What is the way forward for the down-for-the-count Textiles industry?
I think this justifies the point I raised that we need a strong federal government. The industries collapsed because we have a weak government. We need a government with appropriate industrial policies that would protect the industries.
When we had strong governments in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Nigeria was one of the leading countries in the world. That means a government that says these issues are on priority list, it will enforce them and nobody can negate that. The government would say pay duties, these goods are banned and they would enforce it.
Today, we have weak governance and things have fallen apart. First, Abacha took us to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and liberalised trade and all sorts of goods were coming into the country. And those that were banned, nobody enforced the ban such that today, imported and smuggled goods dominate 85 per cent of our market. In fact, the locally produced goods in this country now account for less than five per cent.
That is why the newly rebased GDP is not driven by the industries; it is driven largely by telecommunication, services and entertainment. That is why we have a huge army of unemployment because the GDP is not driven by manufacturing and is not labour-driven.
In those days when our GDP was even less than the current one, it was driven by manufacturing and Nigeria recorded full employment. See, for example, the Immigration Service recruitment! They were looking for 4,500 jobs, but about 1.2 million people put in application.
When the United Textiles Limited (UNTL) was in full production in the 80s, it employed 10,000 direct jobs. Those ones were twice or three times the number the Immigration was asking for. The UNTL did not collect N1,000 from applicants, and there was no stampede by applicants leading to death.
I am saying that industrial development is the key. We know the import or relevance of the textiles industry to the economy; that was why we helped government push the intervention funds of N100 billion.
Again, that tells you that we need a strong Federal Government to do that. And with that intervention, UNTL came back on stream in 2007 and they recorded through it 1,500 jobs. And many other factories have loaned from that money, which made them to be stable.
But unfortunately, electricity is still a problem. Many of these factories use generators. Besides, after they produce, they have to grapple with smuggled goods that dominate the market. Because you have produce, you have to undersell because the smuggled goods are cheaper.
Beyond financing, we also have to address other issues like appropriate policies, and we must have a level playing field so that our factories would not undersell because of imported and smuggled goods through unfair competition. Then, electricity has to be stable; our people must also patronise locally produced goods.
Recently, Nigeria Police changed their uniforms. They went to China and purchased those uniforms; yet, we have factories here in Nigeria that can produce for them. How can industry grow without patronage?
One of the outcomes of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is that we must have governments that ensure that things work out for their people.
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