Minimum Pay, Maximum Pain

In this rough and tumble of life, which pervades all aspects of the Nigerian life, the fate of the Nigerian worker is a lot worse as we shall see in the paragraphs that follow. The life of the public employee in Nigeria is a chain of constant struggles only punctuated by rare moments of delight. He struggles to go to school; he struggles to get a job; he struggles to do the work; he struggles to get paid for his labor; and he struggles to get the occasional adjustment to his pay based on the ever-rising cost of living, which is taken for granted in other climes. Yet, he is constantly told that whether in the public or private sector, the compensation for the worker ought to be commensurate with the responsibilities and demands of his office; and must be realistic in terms of permitting him to meet his personal and family obligations.

Today, we are taking off time from politics to revisit the issue of the minimum wage for the Nigerian worker, if only as a way of reminding ourselves that another important war still awaits us. 

After all, in the olden days, the view was popularly held that after festivities, people must still go to farm. The plight of the Nigerian worker is too important to be buried in the debris of electioneering campaigns.
It could as well be that this is in our stars – everything must come by the way of war. If it is not turbulent; if it is not rough; and if it doesn’t carry the aura of war, then, it is not Nigerian.

Look at the ordinary election, which is taken for granted as a simple process of choosing those to lead us for the next four years, as happens in the choice of school prefects and class reps, in other climes. In those climes, if they have anything like voters’ registration, it must be as simple as enrolling pupils for school.

Their election day is just any other day. Between 6 am and 6 pm when polls are open, citizens take 10 to 15 minutes off to go to the polling stations nearest them; cast their votes and return to work. The results will come to them on the tube in the comfort of their homes.

But here, the war is declared early enough in a four-year cycle, when the electoral body calls for the registration of voters. To register is war; and to collect the temporary and permanent registration card is a bigger war. 

Quite often, national and state holidays are declared for these items with the concomitant colossal loss in man-hour. These are all preparatory to the elections proper, which invariably end up in long-drawn battles in the court rooms where some seven odd fellows must veto the collective decisions of millions of people. 

In this rough and tumble of life, which pervades all aspects of the Nigerian life, the fate of the Nigerian worker is a lot worse as we shall see in the paragraphs that follow. 

The life of the public employee in Nigeria is a chain of constant struggles only punctuated by rare moments of delight. He struggles to go to school; he struggles to get a job; he struggles to do the work; he struggles to get paid for his labor; and he struggles to get the occasional adjustment to his pay based on the ever-rising cost of living, which is taken for granted in other climes.

Yet, he is constantly told that whether in the public or private sector, the compensation for the worker ought to be commensurate with the responsibilities and demands of his office; and must be realistic in terms of permitting him to meet his personal and family obligations. 

Again, workers in the public sector must be able to maintain a standard of living that enables them to associate with dignity and respect with their counterparts in private pursuits. After all, the purchasing power of the Naira, whether earned in the public or private sector is subject to the same economic conditions.

Why must the Nigerian worker be taken through the rough road in salary adjustments? In the more advanced democracies, the workers’ first point of contact with an increase in the minimum wage is in the pay cheque. He picks up his pay packet and finds that it is heavier than usual; and it then dawns on him that a new minimum wage has come into effect.  

But here in Nigeria, which is largely the sellers’ market, the minimum wage is open to attack at various fronts. It happens all the time.

As soon as labor mutes the idea of a new minimum wage, the landlords and market woman reckon that workers have already got the increase. The general price level goes up.  At the end of the tortuous process of negotiating the minimum wage, the power of that minimum wage has become totally eroded.

Meanwhile, a measure of garri that was about N300 at the beginning of the process now goes for N1000; and a room in a passage house that was N1000 in the beginning now rents for about N3,500, thus rendering the new minimum wage dead on arrival!

As usual, Labor is currently engaged in the wrong argument. Labor should not be seen as at mid-2017 trying to prevail on government to raise a team to start discussing the modalities for the new minimum wage. 

Labor should all along stay glued to the National Assembly, insisting on a permanent mechanism that automatically produces increased minimum wage at regular intervals, without all the unnecessary rigmaroles associated with current demand methods.

For how long shall we continue to engage in this bull fight? As if the world has just begun, the struggle for the National Minimum Wage Act, 1981, still represents an archetype of our historical struggle here: at that time,

President Shehu Shagari first had to assemble the best crop of economists in the country under the chairmanship of Dr Pius Okigbo, to examine the minimum wage issue in all its ramifications.

Okigbo’s Committee Report was transmitted to the National Assembly from where it went through all the Committee processes after which the State Governors took their turn in appearing before both chambers of the National Assembly.

In spite of all the rigmarole which virtually rendered the National minimum wage almost worthless, it is instructive that many States were unable to pay it. Up till now, many States scattered across the Federation are still unable to pay the current N18,000 minimum wage.

Evidently, there is something wrong somewhere, particularly with our revenue allocation formula. As currently constituted, any discussion of a new minimum wage that does not first seek to correct the obvious imbalance in the revenue sharing formula between the federating units is a complete waste of time. 

A situation in which the Federal Government has enough to spend and throw about while the States and Localities wallow in abject penury is most undesirable. That’s one side of the coin.

On the other side, who really wants a national minimum wage or a national wage structure? Elsewhere, apart from the banana Republics with a total population of a few thousand people, different localities decide for themselves what level of wage they can sustain. 

In the US, for instance, there are localities that can barely afford to pay more than a paltry allowance to their workers. Yet, there are some wealthy areas that afford higher remunerations and better conditions of service than obtain even at the Federal level in Washington, DC.

Our Local and State governments must be free to decide the level of remuneration they can afford for their work force without vitiating the compelling need for development. 

No government should exist for the sole purpose of paying salaries. Government is about human development needs, the satisfaction of which remains the sole justification for government.

As currently constituted, the National Assembly bears the unnecessary burden of creating a balance between the salaries of the Abuja worker with that of the dispensary attendant at Ekudo, a small hamlet in one obscure corner of Uhunmwode Local Government Area of Edo State.

Evidently, the cost of living in both locations is not the same. While the Abuja worker spends his entire salary on housing and transportation, every Ekudo person would feel highly honored if the dispensary attendant (Doctor) agrees to stay in his house for free; plus the fact that the Ekudo worker can make a small cassava farm to augment his income – which facility is not available to the Abuja worker.

It is a sad commentary that suddenly the State Governors are forming themselves into a Trade Union. And so suddenly, they are deciding across board that States can only pay a minimum wage of N27,000 instead of the N30,000, which the Federal Government has agreed to pay to its workers. 

This is an awkward agreement that is doomed to fail. First, if the minimum wage were reduced to sayN10,000, there are some States that cannot pay it. Some of those banana States and Local Governments were mathematically created during the inglorious Sani Abacha regime.

Secondly, when the chips are down, there are some States, as currently constituted, that are richer than the Federal Government. For instance, why should a cosmopolitan-metropolis State like Lagos hide under the trade union arrangement to seek to pay N27,000, when it should be thinking of paying not less than N50,000? The point here is that our laws must be flexible to allow each State to pay according to its ability. 

We have mentioned elsewhere that in a well restructured system, with proper mergers and consolidations, there would be nothing wrong in combining some of those States into entities that make sense.

Hon. Josef Omorotionmwan is a public affairs analyst and former Chairman, Board of Directors, Edo Broadcasting Service. He can be reached at: joligien@yahoo.com