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Bimbola Oyesola
Nigeria’s Organised Labour and the Private Sector (OPS) have tasked Federal Government to relax its lockdown order to enable businesses resume operations to forestall a total collapse of the economy.
Apex organs of the two private sector groups, the Nigeria Labour Conference (NLC) and the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) ahead of President Muhammadu Buhari’s nationwide broadcast last night urged the government to strike a balance between saving lives and preserving the means of livelihood of ordinary Nigerians.
The NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, in a telephone interview with Daily Sun said government’s should see how to manage the lockdown order in various states while thinking out of the box to ensure that the income of Nigerian workers is not jeorpadise at the end of the day.
“While we understand the public health imperatives for extending the lockdown in some parts of the country, it is also very important to underscore the fact that the states currently under total lockdown are the economic and administrative nerve centres of Nigeria. This is very dicey. As much as it is important to keep many Nigerians from dying from coronavirus, loss of income and the accompanying destitution can also be a pathfinder for numerous other sicknesses and deaths,” he said.
The NLC President who said the Congress has set up a situation room along with members of the Civil Society Organisation and the employers’ body, NECA which shared the vision, said this is the time to play the balancing game, adding that the truth is that the economy might relapse into prolonged coma if the current lockdown in the nation’s nerve centres goes beyond the current extension.
He said the concern of NLC as a responsible labour centre is primarily the health and safety of workers especially those in the frontline of COVID-19, adding that Labour is also interested in the recovery of jobs, restoration of income, and sustainability of livelihood especially at the end of the current lockdown.
He said, “Furthermore, we must press that many daily income workers in the informal sector are not benefitting from government palliatives thus putting additional pressure on the savings of formal sector workers. It is important that we engage government on these issues in order not to compound job losses, income shortfall and wage poverty.
“Prolonged lockdowns are best effective in the short term. In the medium to long term, the human instinct to survive would kick in and restraint might lead to the collapse of law and order. Within the first two weeks of the lockdown in some parts of the country, there were widespread acts of civil disobedience, inducement of law enforcement agents to gain passes and even various forms of violent crimes. We fear that the situation will get out hand if the lockdown exceeds one month.”
In the same vein, the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) said that five weeks of economic and business shutdown has overstretched the limits and businesses are beginning to buckle under the weight of its burden without corresponding productivity from workers and necessary support from government.
The NECA Director General, Timothy Olawale said the OPS would want gradual relaxation of the lock down to provide equilibrium between protection of lives and efforts to keep productive activities going as was done in Ghana, Germany and some other countries.
He noted that while businesses remain passive and unproductive with attendant mass loss of revenue, overhead costs remained, while wages obligations to workers and several statutory payments without respite remained constant.
