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Nigerian Labour Movement: Something is Terribly Wrong By Aliyu Aliyu
The happenings in the labour movement in
our dearest country Nigeria never cease to amaze me. Sometimes I feel it
should be called drama movement instead, because they have proved
themselves beyond reasonable doubt to be one of the principal actors in
this tragic comedy called Nigeria.
My idea of a labour movement is an
economic grouping of the class which has been created for the sole purpose
of guarding and amplifying workers rights under a given slave system. The
labour movement in other parts of the world champion workers rights,
defends their interests and safeguards them from insensitive government
policies and the cruel capitalist tendencies of other employers of labour.
But in our beloved country Nigeria, this
as with other annoying happenings is a different case entirley.
The often violent antagonisms and contradictions within the labour
movement on one hand are higher and unusually more important than that
against the government and other employers of labour on the other hand. If
this is true you will agree with me that there is a high level of enthropy,
confusion and disorganization in the Nigerian labour movement.
To this effect, I was not surprised but
highly disappointed when I read in the dailies about two odd weeks ago
that the celebrated labour leader and incumbent governor of Edo State
Comrade Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole berated the state chapters of the Nigerian
Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) for abandoning
him during the struggle to reclaim his electoral mandate. He pointedly
accused them of sellout by supporting his wrongly instated predecessor,
stressing that the unions abandoned their duties for what he called A Pot
of Porridge. He further stressed that while others where on the side of
truth and interested in the struggle, the labour movement where he
belonged was busy dining and wining with with persons believed to have
stolen the peoples mandate. And instead of standing on the part of truth
they were falling upon each other over the appointment of board director
membership as well as receiving KIA cars as gifts. Ladies and gentlemen I
present to you, the Nigerian Labour Movement.
What makes the situation very alarming is
that if a very influential figure like Comrade Adams Oshiomhole who is
celebrated as the most popular and longest serving labour leader in this
country can complain of being deserted by the labour movement during his
time of need then, it looks like the situation has already gone out of
hand.
The painful truth of the matter is that
unless the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress
(TUC) shun their internal squabbles and come together under one banner
they cannot pose a formidable opposition against the government and other
employers of labour.
However there are various lessons to be
learnt from key moments in the past when such internal rifts and problems
have prevented the labour movement from exercising its rights and carrying
out its primary functions.
One such moment was in 1949 when 21
Nigerian coal miners where unduly massacred by the colonial police at
Enugu for peacefully demanding an increase in their wages and other
conditions of service. The Nigerian Nationalist Movement which by then was
among the few pressure groups close to a labour movement was badly
fragmented along political and ethnic lines and could barely put up a
reasonable fight against the government and other colonial elements.
Another case was in the 1970s when shortly
after the formation of the second Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), several
labour leaders and activists who were discontented for various reasons
mainly due to conflicting interests rather than ideology
protested vehemently . The disaffected leaders took their protest to the
then military government of General Murtala Mohammed which then took
advantage of the protest. Using it as an excuse the military government
in its usual autocratic style dealt severly with the labour
movement by instituting a Commission of Inquiry into the affairs of the
movement, it also denounced the new NLC and banned several labour leaders
from further participation in the movement.
Another memorable spectacle was when the
then civilian administration of former president Olusegun Obasanjo made a
very calculated move by decentralizing the labour movement which it
perceived as a threat to its democratic dictatorship. This carefully
thought-out move was to decentralize the labour movement by creating
another labour organization called the Trade Union Congress (TUC) . The
move was welcomed with suspicion in various quarters and generally
perceived to be a calculated move by the government to weaken and shake
the labour movement to its very foundations. The Trade Union Congress
(TUC) has naturally opposed and disagreed with the NLC on various issues
and have constantly sent a subliminal message to the NLC that this it is
no more a one mans show. If the history of the Nigerian Labour Movement is anything to go by, it has clearly shown that something has been terribly wrong from day one and the political equation which remains unbalanced is very simple, The Nigerian labour movement should come up with other creative ways to confront the government other than strike. Without a serious opposition, the protection of workers rights will continue to remain illusive and the average Nigerian worker would continue to be a slave of the larger modern economy.
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