An average
Nigerian is pretty tired and sick of unions declaring strikes at every opportunity
to “press home their demands” on a range of issues usually thrown into the basket
as a veil for the issue-more money and
position. I’m somewhat in a position to have an opinion on the validity of
so many strike actions that take place in Nigeria and I dare submit without any
apologies that it is largely self seeking, greed induced and lust for power, influence,
affluence and unmerited remuneration.
I work in
the public sector and I witness some distasteful attitude of government employees
on daily basis. Mind you, there a few hard working and highly committed public
sector workers out there but these ones are in a diminishing minority. A significant number of workers in the public
sector are earning far more than they put into service to the people.
Government has largely abdicated leadership and necessary regulations to the
various unions in the public place; some of which operate with impunity. Of
course it is very convenient to blame “government” for all our woes but please
who is “government”? I’ve asked this question many times and intuitively people
point to the state secretariat or to the federal secretariat in Abuja. No, I disagree.
We are the government; all of us in this nation state. We are part of the rot
that has bedeviled our country and virtually every sector of our lives. If I may
ask, what efforts have we committed in our various departments and offices to make
things work even with the limited resources available to us? ASUU, for example,
has been on strike for several weeks for the “good of education” in Nigeria but
I’m not buying that argument. Throwing money at the education sector without a
solid foundation for accountability, attitudinal change to work, responsibility,
monitoring and evaluation, will be akin to fetching water in a basket. Has
anyone bothered to conduct a research on how students perceive the input of
their lecturers in their academic pursuit? How often do time tables change
because some lecturer is not just available only for lectures to be crammed
within a few days to exams? What about the timeliness of students’ assessment,
exam results, and project supervision? These and similar issues are areas we
should not ignore. How much effective hours are lecturers supposed to put in as
part of their routine work and how is this input objectively assessed and by
whom? How long should a thesis sit on the shelf of the assessor and who monitors
that time limit is adhered to in the name of standard of practice and quality
assurance? These checklists should also apply to health and other sectors. We
must be able to account for the public trust and expectation of our position
before we ask for more trust and responsibility.
However, it
is inevitable that trade disputes may arise between employers and employees and
that should have some rules of engagement
by the unions so as to minimize damage to public interest and achieve the
highest good for the people. There is also need to lead by example by
subjecting any withdrawal of service to true democratic process. It is not just
enough for the union executives to take a decision to proceed on strike or call
a congress where members in attendance are usually those who are pro-strike.
The grave implication of a total withdrawal of service warrants extending to
all members of the union an opportunity to decide their willingness to be involved
or not in such drastic measures. In some decent clime, ballot papers are sent
to all members and time given for them to return their verdict on whether a strike
action is supported or not. A critical
percentage of members must endorse a strike action before it is undertaken. This
is not what happens in our own situation where a handful of “hot” heads gather
and take “aluta” action in the name of “congress” and it is not unusual for a
good number of members of these unions to be totally ignorant of the reason(s)
for their strike action. What is the morality of this process of withdrawal of
service by union members or “congress”, especially considering that members of
the public suffer most in the situation? Has anyone quantified the needless
loss of lives and worsening of diseases of patients in many needles s strikes
in the health sector? Just recently some amalgam of striking unions in the
health sector, named JOHESU, called their members for a total strike for
reasons that are difficult to situate in the context of any improved health
care delivery to the people. Is it not a shame that for selfish and pecuniary
reasons, we betray public trust and the responsibility we owe to
professionalism and humanity? Visit a typical public health institution and you
will see many “health workers” that have no business in the hospital order than
union activities and fomenting trouble. These redundant workers sit back and
think of ways to advance themselves to unmerited positions on the back of
reckless unionism and frank lawlessness. Unfortunately, government instead of
showing leadership and applying the principle of rule of law will rather engage
these unions in endless negotiations on issues that basically do not address
any real growth and development in the sector. Walk into any public institution,
and I can speak of health, and you’ll find staff watching video or playing
games on their computers, being on endless breaks, or chatting away while some eyes
are fixed on the clock for the magical time of 4pm when they leave without
delay for a day of “work done”. We can accuse “government” of inefficiency and
all manners of incompetence, but there is no word to describe the level of irresponsibility,
deficient work ethics and lack of productivity by a good number of government
workers who are quick to down tools to press home for “better condition” of
service. In any well supervised system or in the private sector, these workers
won’t last a day on their job except of course they prove they deserve to be
paid at the end of the month. Worse still, when they embark on the incessant
strike, they still collect their monthly salaries and entitlements while
members of the public suffer untold hardship, misery and death due to these
actions that are contrived to deceive the public as fighting for a general
good. A real fight for the general good will include rejection of salaries if government
fails to address issues that will optimize work and improve the wellbeing of
the public. People go on hunger strike to press home their firm beliefs or convictions
on the subject of their protest. No, our “strikers” continue to “earn” their salaries
for doing no work and in fact it is usually factored in as a part of resolution
of the dispute that all remunerations for the period of strike are paid in full
before calling off the strike. What is the morality in accepting salaries from government
when your claim for a strike action is government lack of attention to the sector?
Won’t it be a stronger statement to refuse salaries as a mark of principle and to
clearly demonstrate to the public that their interest is the primary concern? No,
a good number of our lecturers in public institutions have their children in
elite private universities or outside of the country. How many health care
workers will be happy to be treated in their own institutions when ill, and how
many of them who can afford to “travel out” for medical consultation, will
readily submit themselves to the local facilities and personnel when they or
their close relations are ill? Are we not deceiving ourselves and going in a
vicious cycles that is spinning out of
control by a total lack of national
rebirth ethos, and by not taking our
future into our hands through giving in our best, even in the midst of obvious
limitations? Everywhere one turns, it is the scream of “Gimme! Gimme!!” and there
is a deafening silence when it calls for sacrifice and to give back to the
system. We are running down our institutions, countries and African continent
by the recklessness that is prevalent in our unions and lack of individual accountability
and we are failing to address personal responsibility by laying blame on some imaginary
“government” when in actual fact we are the government and we must take a
collective responsibility and start the process of rebuilding our institutions,
sometimes in pains and discomfort. We cannot eat our cake and have it. The call
now is for sacrifice and for all categories of workers to have some
introspection and operate within their bound of competence, professional
calling and local and international best practice. A country cannot choose to
isolate itself from the comity of nations and apply strange modalities of doing
things. We must examine what is obtainable in similar environments and learn
what makes their system to work and ours not working. There is no need to
reinvent the wheel. Unions and organizations should place a ban on strikes,
step away from military mentality and start to retool strategies in engaging
organs of government in effecting any desire change in the context of general
improvement of quality of service rendered to the public. The interest of the
people should be of paramount importance to such extent that members of the public
will be the ones to champion our position in any event of dispute with the
government. If we bother to gauge public perception of the current incessant
strikes, we will be shocked to know how much they loathe our actions and how
much they are seeking for alternative ways to bypass our inefficient,
unreliable and poor services.
Hopefully, one day government will come to
realize that our service public institutions cannot be sustained this way and
will consider handing over to Organized Private Sector to manage while
government provides the enabling environment/infrastructure for operation.
Until the process of recruitment of staff, work supervision and output evaluation
are streamlined, we’ll continue to have over bloated workforce that is
essentially jobless and willing tools for destabilization and reckless strikes action
that are basically self seeking and immoral in approach and execution. We have
placed our interests above the general interest of our society.
When all
the ongoing strikes are eventually “suspended” (to be resumed at a later time
as service oil for our “famous” unionists) I hope we can muster the sincerity
to count the losses:
- Worsened diseases that have resulted
in preventable complications and permanent disability in some cases;
- Deceased patients who can’t be
brought back to life;
- An unreliable health care system
that cannot be trusted with the health of the people;
- A workforce that generally lacks
ethos of service with a distorted sense of entitlement;
- Students who will never return to
school because their circumstance has changed irreversibly;
- A battered education system that
remains perpetually in coma;
- Lack of faith in government and in public
institutions by the people and resort to self help with resultant jungle mentality
and low premium on lives and property
We can’t
possibly build a healthy nation and in turn, a progressive continent, with the
above indices. We can’t afford to continue on this destructive path any longer.
It’s time we cared more deeply for our people and in turn create a fertile bed
for us to thrive as individuals and as a community.
