Workers’ strikes: The annoying posture of Ondo State

Many of Nigeria’s 36 states are still in turmoil over unpaid workers’ salaries. Although the fall in oil revenue which drastically reduced government income accounts for the present situation, those who are unable to appreciate the dilemma of the states cannot be blamed, considering the pattern of recklessness of some governors in the nation. If […]

Many of Nigeria’s 36 states are still in turmoil over unpaid workers’ salaries. Although the fall in oil revenue which drastically reduced government income accounts for the present situation, those who are unable to appreciate the dilemma of the states cannot be blamed, considering the pattern of recklessness of some governors in the nation. If the affected states had made salaries their priority as soon as they observed falling incomes, the situation would not have been this bad.  Several issues can easily dry up any form of pity for the affected states. The first is the argument by the immediate past minister of finance, Ngozi Iweala that such states are blame worthy because they were warned through the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee to make the issue of wages a priority but they chose not to do so, hence their present predicament.
The second issue is that after the states managed to secure bail-out loans from the federal government, they did not again make salaries the priority. From the latest alarm raised by the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), some states allegedly did not defray unpaid teachers’ salaries from the bailout fund because they had diverted the fund to areas they can easily have quick returns. The NUT President, Michael Ologba, who made the allegation at a press briefing to mark this year’s World Teachers’ day, appealed to the Federal Government to call the affected states to order to avoid a consequential industrial dispute. The solution appears far because when state governors claimed to be seeking lasting solutions to the worsening macroeconomic challenges confronting the nation by getting a presidential bailout, this column warned that what must change is their lack of prudent spending. Luckily, the governors found at the July meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC) that to cut the cost of governance in their respective states was an imperative.
If truly the bailout was diverted, then we are into a season of strikes. Ondo started it .last Wednesday followed by Cross River two days later. Briefing newsmen in Akure during the week, the State Chairman of the Joint Public Service Negotiating Council, Sunday Adeleye, stated that the strike was inevitable because meetings between his council and representatives of the state government yielded no fruits.  Adeleye noted that non-payment of all deductions in the salaries of workers after collecting N14b bailout from the federal government showed the government’s insensitivity to the plight of civil servants in the state. In Cross River State, the situation was the same.  Bulletins circulated by the Organised Labour Action Committee in Calabar showed the demands of the workers to include salaries of local government workers and teachers, as well as salaries and allowances of staff of the Cross River University of Technology, weigh-in allowances.  The State Chairman of the Trade Union Congress, Mr. Clarkson Otu, said the workers were piqued over the claim of the state government that the bailout fund was to offset loans acquired. 
If to owe workers their salaries is worrisome, it is worse to seek to play smart games with such deprived citizens as the Ondo State Government sought to do last week through its top officials. While the Head of Service, Toyin Akinkuotu said the “labour leaders were unfair to the government because they had agreed during the meeting that things would be sorted out amicably”, information Commissioner Kayode Akinmade described the strike as an embarrassment and an unpatriotic act on the part of the workers since they had started receiving the July salary last Tuesday. Akinmade then threw the bombshell that the strike was politically motivated – a clearly infuriating posture.  How can a strike be described as politically motivated when the aggrieved have been economically driven to the wall? First, would non-payment of the salaries pave the way for issues to be sorted amicably? Put differently, while waiting for an amicable settlement, how do workers sustain their livelihood? Second, all that the workers did was to embarrass the state government while the latter attempted to economically kill the workers.
If the Ondo state government thought it was smart, it failed to realize it is hard to be smarter than workers about salaries. For instance, while the government employed circumlocution, the workers effectively mobilized public opinion against it. They wondered aloud that: a) the government was into divide and rule by paying net salary for the month of July to core civil servants and secondary school teachers whereas it paid nothing to workers in the local government,  primary school teachers and other categories of workers: b)  the state government breached the agreement it reached with labour leaders that gross salaries of July and August and deductions for June would be paid: c) the action of the government was contrary to what was been aired on the State Radio vision Corporation that government had commenced payment of salaries of July and August to all workers and d) workers are aware that the government had placed the bailout fund  in a fixed deposit account to yield interests. To me, the workers beat government hands down on the subject
Consequently, the Ondo State government should be careful next time not to use officials who do not know what to say or how to speak during crises. The style of accusing every aggrieved person of being used by political opponents which the last PDP federal government always employed is certainly stale. Any government that has a problem with citizens should deal squarely with the issue at stake instead of attributing every disagreement including industrial action to politics. The latter should remember that the same workers clapped relentlessly for the state government when it initiated the Abiye safe motherhood project and drastically reduced maternal mortality rate.  Indeed, everyone including the World Bank, the London Tropical School of Medicine and the Bill gate Institute of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, was proud of Governor Segun Mimiko and he won election twice. We submit that once Ondo state pays its workers, no one will successfully motivate them politically against their government.