NLC’s Minimum Wage ALUTA And National Development
If I should belong to, in fact I belong to the school of thought that reasons that since the Nigeria legislators, ministers and government functionaries allocate outrageous and mind bugling amounts to themselves in addition to colossal amounts some of the same set of people in conjunction with the cabals that are holding the nation to ransom milk the nations resources through the unprecedented corruption. That even the minimum wage is even N50, 000= is simply not adequate for the nation’s work force. If the nation’s work force is paid N100,000= minimum wage, the overall wage adjustments would still be a far cry from what the legislators and government official collect legally from the nation’s resources let alone what some of them take illegally through corruption.
Having said these, to be frank with the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress and other labour unions, the real task before all is how to ensure that there is good governance at all tiers of the nation’s government; meaning that the NLC must map out strategy to engage any tier of the nation’s government when there is glaring evidence of corruption, incompetence and outright waste on the part of the president, governor, ministers legislators commissioners any time.
If the NLC and others fail to map out strategy to engage government at all levels for good governance but are successful for instance to bring up minimum wage to say N50,000; such ‘victory’ would be meaningless if because of poor governance and corruption; consumer price index continue to rise to all time level fuelled by hyper inflation and sustained fall in the value of Naira. This means that though worker may earn more and more, the value of the earning and therefore the workers purchasing power would continue to get less and less until the economy itself would have been suffocated.
On the other hand, if the NLC by any means helps to force the government at all levels to observe good governance to the extent that consumer price index is at an all time low, inflation is not only single digit but quite low, the economy is also diversified and basic super structures beefed up to an acceptable level; instead of the present infrastructural deficit of N30 trillion which in turn would strengthen the Naira to say N50 to a US Dollar. Should this happen, even the minimum wage of N18,000 would mean so much for the Nigeria workers.
In conclusion, those that are running the country should understand that the development of the country does not lie in effective and prompt sharing of the crude oil resources to the three tiers of government and to contractors that may most likely not execute the so called contracts and payment of wages to workers. The economy must be diversified without waste of time and vital developmental super structures must be put in place if we hope to salvage the country. Government officials coming out to exchange and dispute experts report that the nation’s infrastructural deficit is N30 trillion and that therefore that the nation is tilting dangerously to the failed state statues are to say the least foolish because it is obvious to all that the nation is decaying.
NLC should also be aware that there is no wage increment that can improve the statue of the Nigeria workers without good governance besides the NLC must realize that Nigeria is a federation and there is no way wage scales can be the same in all the states in Nigeria. Some states are rich some are poor or even more or less unviable, so what is the wisdom in insisting on the same pay across the board for all states and it beats me how the central government would be negotiating wage matters for itself and various states also. The legislators, governors the president, ministers and commissioners salaries and allowances must be revised down to what is reasonable with the survival of the economy in mind. The earlier argument that government officials should be paid well to dissuade them from corruption does not hold any water whichever way you look at it. They earn outrageous pays and some of them if not many of them still help the cabals to loot the nation’s treasury. If the system is designed to encourage looting no amount of jumbo pay to government functionaries would discourage them from monumental looting!
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