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By Dauda Ajuwon
It will be difficult to benchmark the achievements of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in the labour sector without being misled by the barrage of grim indices that shape the world of work since 2015. They are unrelenting! The unemployment rate is high at 34% while a discomfiting multidimensional Poverty Index, pegged at 63%, means that about 133 million out of about 200 million Nigerians live in abject poverty. These figures are, well, not belied by the realities on the ground. The gnashing of teeth across the length and breadth of the nation is too loud though the cossetted few, cocooned at the top national leadership, will usually dispute in self defence. With the distorting effects of galloping inflation on the economy, the concomitant runaway prices of goods and services, the N30,000 minimum wage born in 2019 is now worth less than the previous N18,000. Workers, who are fixed income earners, are the worst hit. The harvest of strikes by different labour unions, which peaked with the infamous nine months’ strike by the Academic Staff of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) is not unconnected with the snapped purchasing power. The resilient Nigerian spirit remained strong in the face of a near rock-melting hardship, but was almost hard done by the stern two-months of a hugely mismanaged currency swap regime, in between which came the highly blemished 2023 general election. Sweltering was the heat. However, while these unflattering indices are signposts to how badly the administration fared in its promise of better life, it also largely sucked the oxygen away from a relative distinction made by the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige. But it certainly does not tell all. The reason is that, if we put together all the indicators that connote positive change in the world of work, it becomes easier to locate the impact of the revolution the minister engineered, though fiercely held down by a cacophony of more visible negative signs.
And nothing bears this fact out than a well-thought-out, futuristic institutionalization of the labour administrative processes to replace whimsical procedures that had dogged the ministry over time. And that is Ngige’s high score in labour standards – solidifying the rules and regulations that govern the world of work! This will not be very obvious to casual observers but labour watchers and stakeholders understand the huge implications. Generally, lack of strong institutions is one of the biggest challenges facing developing countries. The former President of the United States, Barack Obama, captured it better while on a state visit to Ghana in 2009. He urged African countries to “build institutions rather than strongmen.” Strong institutions are the engine of growth and fulcrum of stability. In the Ministry of Labour, Ngige caused the strengthening of labour institutions in a number of ways, top among which is the deliberate stimulation of the interplay of labour laws (Trade Dispute Acts, Trade Union Acts) as well as the relevant conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to dictate dispute resolution, with an unfettered social dialogue at the centre. He quietly emplaced reliance on statutory provisions rather than dependence on subjective whims. He opened a new page in labour administration where legality is ascending beyond caprice.
How would there be productivity in a zero locale of labour standards? It will be a descent to the jungle. We almost got there in the last four years. While strikes are legitimate tools in tripartite negotiations, a chance observer of its deluge lately might think the labour laws are not adequate for regulating tripartite relations. The contrary is the abundance of robust provisions whose potency is mostly untapped by successive labour administrators. Just a few of them! Section 43 of the Trade Disputes Act on “no work, no pay,” Section 17 on suspension of strike once apprehended, Section 18 mandating the minister of labour to transmit a failed negotiation to the Industrial Court or Arbitration Panel, Section 37 of the Trade Union Act that requires registered union to render yearly audited account to the Registrar of Trade Union on or before June of every year. There is also Section 7 of the Trade Disputes Act that contemplates essential services, Section 6 of the Trade Union Act that guards against dictatorial unionism, the ILO Convention 87 on rights of workers to strike, and the protection of the employer and his business, Convention 144 on the primacy of social dialogue among so many others that were left to gather dust because of lack of political will and the fixing of institutional mechanism for labour standards, which is capable of outlasting successive public officers. In two years alone, while actively pursuing the review of moribund labour laws already before the National Assembly, Ngige has achieved the ratification of four critical ILO Conventions, including 2006 C(187) on Occupational Safety, 2019 C (190) on Gender Violence and Harassment, 175(143) on Migrant Workers and 1997(181) on Private Employment Agency. The impact of these ratified conventions in the world of work will be immense.
Significant steps in labour standards have largely succeeded in charting a new course and pushing to the centre stage a system-based mechanism, which rested the ghost of ceaseless strikes by labour unions, especially in the health and education sectors. This will definitely inspire a change in the climate of unionism, in a manner that puts penchant for strike on the backfoot. It will deter the unions from a typical perennial knives-out, a situation where strike is the first option instead of a last resort, even in circumstances where unwilling union members are played as fiddle, and the national productivity consigned on the tenterhook.
It is in this light that a hypothetical line of disinformation by Emmanuel Onwubiko, a rights activist, on Ngige’s handling of the last ASUU strike, passes off as an act in ignorance or mischief. He deployed utter lies as an effective tool and concretizes same with a blanket insinuation that the minister failed in his responsibilities. Selective perception and wrongful deduction might have blurred his view to ASUU’s obscurantism and non-cooperation in turning down every offer made to it, only to turn round and accept the same before the National Assembly, after wasting nine months at home. Onwubiko’s inchoate red herring and narrowness on the democratization of unionism as regard the unbundling of ASUU is unforgivable for an activist. The decentralization of unions makes them true representatives of workers and denies opportunity to leviathanism, which suppresses the views of a significant union membership as seen in the case of ASUU, where NAMDAM and CONUA today breath freedom. The minister has done well by extending intellectual democracy, which ASUU touts to unionism also.
Key to this institutionalization is to engrave in the subconscious of unionism that there are laws and that default carries consequences. And that the ambit of the law remains the only alternative for the expression of dissent. While this does not mean the enthronement of tyranny by the government over the tripartite, it will ensure that irresponsible strikes inured to entreaties of social dialogue are neutered through due process of law, hence, the recommendation by the minister that newly elected leadership of labour unions undergoes a compulsory training at the Michael Imodu Institute of Labour Studies to be at home with the nuances of labour laws and Conventions of the ILO.
•Ajuwon is former Director of Inspectorate, Ministry of Labour and Employment
