In a country where the other political parties, and the Conference of Nigeria’s Political Parties, CNPP, are as good as ineffective, the only opposition to President Olusegun Obasanjo’s style of governance is the Adams Oshiomole Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC. With the passing of the executive- sponsored labour bill, it would not in any way, serve Nigeria’s interest or her citizens’ should President Obasanjo’s labour bill be allowed to enjoy the benefit of full execution.
Now that it has become law, the spectre of doom is magnified for the average Nigerian because the only veritable opposition to President Obasanjo’s economic policies which do not seem to have a “human face or the milk of human kindness”, since the other political parties are as good as dead, is the NLC.
But the Senate, which was quick to embark on a strike because members felt a minister insulted them, has passed the bill.
And although the Senate was smart enough not to go the full hog of the bill as presented by the executive, the Senate still passed the bill in a manner which suggests that the new found cordial relationship between the executive and the legislature is with a view to ensuring that the Nigerian masses are kept permanently at the receiving end of the policies of government.
The bill seeks to outlaw some categories of strikes but it was to be an irony ordained on a day Nigeria’s Senate was to pass the bill restricting strike action by workers, the Senate on Tuesday, September 31, embarked on a 48-hour ‘strike’ to compel the dismissal of the Federal Capital Minister, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai from office on account of invectives against the lawmakers.
If the Senate could easily fall back on a strike action just because of an ego issue, and the same Senate was dragged by the nose to help legislate for the quasi-proscription of strikes in Nigeria, by engendering the incapacitation of the NLC, which at least manifestly champion better causes than an insult from a minister to a legislator, it merely highlights the shallowness of thinking, the depravity of the mind and the morass to which the polity has sunk.
Now, which is more important: Going on strike because a minister has refused to tender an apology to legislators or a president whose reforms have completely wiped out what was once left of the middle class?
It may now begin to matter more, at least to men of civility, that whatever it is Obasanjo is attempting to do to labour, does not, in any way, make sense - at least in the interest of the Nigerian masses. But he has collaborators, members of Nigeria’s Senate.
And it may not matter that the same labour, which supported the shambolic elections which brought President Obasanjo back for a second term, on the seemingly altruistic basis that the elections of 4, 19, 2003 (which has since been referred to as the 419 elections) was, by Nigerian and African standards, near free and fair. It may not also matter that Adams Oshiomhole, the President of the NLC, a man who Obasanjo refers to as my dear friend, is the same person at the butt of the move by the latter to ensure that the opposition which Oshiomhole provided and provides, and which saw to it that those who, genuinely were attempting to truncate the Fourth Republic, were not allowed to do so; and that even before the elections of last year.
The present tango is over a bill to attempt to proscribe the NLC through the back door.
Not uncharacteristically, it is an executive-sponsored bill.
The bill, while making bland pretensions to attempting to democratise participation in unionism, actually goes ahead to place in the hands of the Minister of Labour, enormous powers with which he can cause the blackmail or suspension or censorship of workers.
Now that the Senate has passed the bill into an act, labour enthusiasts would now avail the Nigerian public the benefit of analysis of the new labour act.
In countries where the trade union has influence, Nigeria would be the butt of pressure and opprob
