Workers Day 2022: Labour Task Federal Government on Good Governance

As workers across the world commemorate this Year’s Workers’ Day, organised labour in Nigeria has expressed deep concerns that the country is still struggling in its quest for good governance.
 
While noting that successive administrations, and political leaders across different strata have promised good living and working conditions, as well as improved economy over the years but failed, the labour movement bemoaned the pitiable condition in which Nigerians eke out a  living. 
   
Paradigm News  reports that  Labour representatives  highlighted the high rate of unemployment, galloping inflation in the country, low wages, insecurity, cost of living,  crippled educational system, failing healthcare sector, as some of the indices that have made life unbearable for workers. 

They, therefore, urged the Federal Government to address these issues decisively and urgently. The President, Trade Union Congress (TUC) of Nigeria, Quadri Olaleye,  faulted the inactive participation of Nigerian workers in past general elections, saying it is partly responsible for the “pitiable condition the workers have found themselves, especially in the area of minimum wage implementation.
  
To this end, Olaleye said the union was mobilising members across the country to be fully involved and participate in the forthcoming general elections to elect good leaders.
  
Speaking on this year’s May Day theme, “Labour, Politics, and Quest for Good Governance and Development in Nigeria” at a pre-May Day symposium, organised by the Lagos State Council of the NLC, and the TUC, Chairman Lagos State TUC, Gbenga Ekundayo, said the theme and this year’s celebration was about how labour could galvanise the common man to get involved and elect good leaders that could move the country forward.

 He said the TUC had set up a commission to galvanise and mobilise the masses in the political process leading to the 2023 general elections so that everyone could be involved.
According to him  “The theme is how can labour get involved in the political space so that we can have good governance and control the narrative of who gets into which office, so that we can be sure that those people there are best to give us the development we desire, through the provision of water, good roads, rail networks, good waterways for alternative transportation, provision of constant electricity support and adequate healthcare, among others”
 
Earlier in a May Day rally in Abuja, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President, AyubaWabba, called on the governments of Taraba, Cross River and Zamfara states to immediately commence the payment of the arrears of national minimum wage owed their workers.  He also called on the Abia State government to immediately clear the backlog of pension arrears owed its retirees.

In his message, the President of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), Festus Osifo, called for urgent and immediate fixing of the nation to avoid a looming disaster.
 
He said Nigerian workers, in recent times, have been plagued with harsh social and economic maladies, ranging from a hike in prices of some petroleum products to epileptic power supply, occasioned by low generation, transmission, and distribution with the resultant effect on the high cost of manufactured goods and services.
 
He also mentioned challenges occasioned by energy transition, difficult business environment, youth unemployment, disruption in the educational sector, especially at the tertiary levels due to incessant strikes by ASUU over unfulfilled signed agreements with the government, and intense hunger arising from the dislocation of farmers by insurgents. 
 
According to him, the most frightening of them all is the worsening insecurity, with kidnappings and deaths soaring on a daily basis. These tragic indices, the PENGASSAN boss said, were indications that the nation was gradually descending into a failed state added that if nothing drastic is done to curtail these, the naysayers and prophets of doom may be proven right.
 
The union’s petroleum counterpart, the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), in a message to workers on May Day, decried the inhumane and indecent working conditions that have continued unabated in one form or the other in the country. He said this was evident in new forms of employment including child labour, trafficking, casual, contract, and outsourced labour.
 
According to NUPENG, millions of working people have suffered one form of dehumanisation and exploitation from unscrupulous employers, while many have died in the process.
 
The union condemned in strong terms the most unfortunate and avoidable deaths and destruction arising from the explosion and inferno at an illegal refinery in a forest at Abaezi, Ohaji- Egbema local council of Imo State with hundreds of lives lost.
 
NUPENG said: “There is no doubt that the high level of unemployment and struggles for survival drove these hundreds of able-bodied young men and women to seek for self-help and died in the explosion that happened at the illegal refinery”
 
The workers called on FG to rise up to its responsibilities in stemming the increasing thefts of  crude oil and the continued loss of revenue.

 On the global stage, workers’ unions, under the aegis of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), also called for workplace health and safety to become a fundamental right for working people on the occasion of the International Workers’ Memorial Day.
  
The ITUC noted that as the number of workplace cases of COVID-19 shows failures in health and safety at work can have catastrophic effects, not only on workers themselves and their families but also on individual businesses and even whole economies.
  
It submitted that it is in the interests of workers, employers and governments to make occupational health and safety an ILO fundamental principle and right at work.