Succumbing to Labour’s blackmail

It is therefore not surprising, nor is it a wonder that the organized labour under the NLC and the TUC had been able to hold government to ransom, forcing it to make concessions above government’s reasonable capability. That an insignificant position of the national populace is able to ground government to a standstill under the […]

It is therefore not surprising, nor is it a wonder that the organized labour under the NLC and the TUC had been able to hold government to ransom, forcing it to make concessions above government’s reasonable capability. That an insignificant position of the national populace is able to ground government to a standstill under the guise of being organized only confirms the state of ineptitude and lack of responsiveness of the various governments to the yearnings of the other sectors of the economy. Otherwise, how can a privileged minority group hold the whole country to ransom in the name of industrial strike?

Because of their perennial state of non-performance generally, nobody takes the various governments serious when they talk of their responsibilities to other sectors of the economy as an alibi for their inability to meet the wage request of the labour force. This is more so when they cannot point in concrete terms to other sectors whether road, energy, power or agriculture that had felt the presence of government in all honesty. In other words, a really performing government has an antidote against organised labour’s threat and intimidation.

Throughout the First Republic and especially in the western region of Obafemi Awolowo, the labour union was weak that it could not hold government to ransom. That was because whether in the area of education, health or agriculture, government’s claim was beyond rhetoric’s as it was not a mere propaganda. But nowadays and in the wake of infrastructural decay or negligence in virtually all the socio economic sectors like education and health, people have to depend on the private sector for the education of their children up to university levels and to meet their health needs.

Up till the time, free education and free health services were functional in the south west; the labour did not have the teeth to bite the various governments between 1979 and 1983. If they dared it at that time, the other sectors of the economy, market associations, professional groups as well as the entire self-employed sectors of the economy would match on the streets to overwhelm them. That was because they had something to point to in terms of government services to them.

It is unfortunate, nay selfish, of the organised labour to pretend ignorance of youth restiveness as a result of massive unemployment across the country. Yet, a good government is supposed to owe responsibilities to both the public and private sectors of its labour force. Various structural incentives like good roads, regular power, liberalised loans for unemployed graduates, especially in the area of agriculture and small scale industry had to be provided, including crafts and artisanship. But in the absence of all these infrastructural maintenance, perhaps labour may be right to see itself as the only organised body that can face government head on.

In states like Oyo, the labour movement seems to see government only in terms of being its ‘authorised agent’ in the Federal Revenue Allocation Committee, only ready to drop the residual after it has taken the chunks. The situation in Oyo is so precarious that any government that wants to engage the labour group must be ready to cultivate the larger sectors of the populace through the regular provision of visible essential socio-economic services for their benefits.

In Oyo State, the challenges are enormous for any purposeful government desirous of a positive change. The contemporary ineptitude of successive governments in the last eight years had put the various governments at the mercy of labour. In the process, labour in Oyo State had turned itself to a monster of intimidation and harassment of feeble governments.

The strategy had always been to get a spurious agreement with an outgoing government at the twilight of that administration. Such agreements had always made them combat ready for an incoming government, without caring to explain why they have to wait until the last hour to get such concessions.

In 2007, the first problem that the then new Akala administration faced was the implementation of an agreement the then Ladoja administration hurriedly entered with the labour union. Unwittingly, therefore, labour had to arrange an indefinite strike as its own welcome reception for the then new government. It is therefore not surprising that the same government, having identified the weak spot of labour as a ready political tool to destabilise any new government, now employed the same labour for the damnable service.

The choice before the present administration in Oyo State is clear if it is really a progressive government. It is to use the limited resources at its disposal transparently for the ultimate good and benefit of the general populace, including the labour community. The other option is to make itself a perpetual captive in the custody of organised labour. It has the choice of bringing education back to its past but almost lost glory in the state. In the same vein, the healthcare system is crying for liberation.

Agboola Sanni wrote from Ibadan