By Hassan Gimba

For the past four years, I have been insisting that our problem and even need now is not about salary increment but about being a productive nation that produces what it needs and uses what it produces.

This would galvanise our economy and strengthen the naira. With a strong currency, ₦30,000 is more than enough as a basic salary.

Just imagine the naira to be equal to the dollar and there was a time when ₦60 was equal to $100. Here I have reproduced an old writeup on this topic.

There is no Nigerian that will tell you he is not aware of the NLC even if he does not know that it is an acronym for the Nigeria Labour Congress.

What the average Nigerian knows about them is that they always go on strike at the drop of a hat, strikes that have lost their meaning because they always achieve almost nothing.

Well, there’s nothing in it for the average Nigerian; only for the vanguards of the congress. At least, that is what an average citizen will tell you. This suspicion, or rather an assumption, is fueled by the fact that days into a strike, the comrades would be shown on national television laughing and exchanging banters with government officials, and the next you hear is that the strike is suspended while the reasons for the strike in the first place remain unresolved.

Citizens suspect the laughs from the chubby-cheeked people on the ‘telly’ mean each side is happy with what transpired at the closed-door meeting despite the cause of the strike remaining unsolved.

A good example is that of fuel increase or subsidy withdrawal. The labour leaders would shout, give ultimatums and then mobilise workers for a strike. And these strikes affect everyone, not only workers because the public and private sectors are intricately connected. Yet the issue (subsidy) lingers: the palliatives promised, even though mainly targeted to help government workers, are too little or are still being awaited.

We were witnesses to a long strike, getting to almost a year, by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), yet the NLC was nowhere to be found.

But what is getting alarming now is that the labour union, like our governments and their institutions, is becoming a tool for personal causes. There is no reason for the union to call a national strike because its president was assaulted. If he was attacked because he was fighting for fairness and justice, then that should be seen as a sacrifice for his role.

Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Aminu Kano, Gambo Sawaba and many other great freedom and human rights fighters never privatised or personalised their struggles or made people fight the system because they were assaulted.

In any case, how many Nigerians have been attacked, humiliated and dehumanised without the labour union fighting for them? How many have been killed, some by non-state actors and some by security agents? And some victims were public servants. If labour says it is there for the workers, where was it?

And despite this, they are full of cowardice. For instance, the labour union president was manhandled in Owerri, but they came to Abuja Airport to block access roads and, after that, they embarked on a nationwide strike.

We have had many labour leaders, right from Michael Imoudu, popularly known as Pa Imoudu, the father of labour unionism in Nigeria, but none of them personalised the labour struggle till now.

Wahab Goodluck, the first president of the NLC, who served between 1978 and 1984, led the struggle for better wages and working conditions.

He fought against the government’s attempt to deregulate the economy and privatise state-owned enterprises. He organised the NLC and made it a force to be reckoned with, but he never personalised the struggle.

Paschal Bafyau, who took over from Goodluck, made the NLC more politically conscious and active, but he never personalised the union. He successfully negotiated a minimum wage and led the union in the fight to usher in civilian rule in 1999.

One of the greatest presidents the NLC ever had was Ali Ciroma, who served from 1988 to 1994. He fought against General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s move to introduce the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).

The union gained strength and influence under his leadership, but one thing he did not do was personalise its activities.

Adams Oshiomhole, who served as its president from 1999 to 2007, gave the labour union more visibility, influence and effectiveness but he never personalised its fight.

One may contend that the quality of the labour union and its search for solutions for the Nigerian worker and, ultimately, the country started nose-diving after Oshiomhole. Many people expected the union to be at the vanguard of solving the country’s problems instead of being self-serving and bringing archaic ways to help the workers and the country.

A good example is the one to do with minimum wage. For how long will labour unions continue mouthing ‘salary increments’ in the face of dwindling national income and the plummeting value of our currency?

Perhaps out of intellectual paucity, they have failed to propose a more intellectually viable option, to both workers and the government, about how to stabilise the naira and make us a nation that produces what it consumes and vice versa.

Every patriot knows that buying things from abroad causes capital flight. A patriotic labour union should be the last to sanction a situation where our government spends hundreds of billions of naira annually to buy cars from foreign manufacturers, thereby keeping afloat other countries’ economies to the detriment of ours.

But Nigerian labour leaders feel comfortable being chauffeur-driven in foreign cars, keeping foreign businesses thriving and foreigners employed while Nigerian youths are jobless and languishing in abject poverty because the country’s industries are dead. How patriotic! This is why they cannot offer a better alternative other than asking for a salary increment. They do not have the intellectual capacity to know that it is not the quantity but the quality of the currency that matters.

Take, for instance, the case of China and Germany, where the minimum wages are $358 (about ₦405,000 as of last week) and 1557 euro (₦1,845,000) respectively, now cast your mind back to when the naira was at par with the dollar and assume our minimum wage of ₦30,000 is $30,000, don’t you think that is more than enough?

Yet still, workers in some of these countries enjoy free housing, healthcare, education, affordable public transport and a constant supply of electricity. This is why salaries have value there.

Our labour union, which should be fighting for better working conditions and stronger currency, is instead fighting for more money, thereby courting inflation and encouraging capital flight through patronising foreign goods and services.

With our bumbling, self-serving and intellectually lazy labour union, it is high time we started scrutinising their motives and their base desires.

Hassan Gimba is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Neptune Prime.

By Segun Adeleye

See how time flies!

It’s a year since that symbolical declaration in his inaugural speech “….that these things are within our proximate reach because my name is Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and I am the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

A lot can be said about the confidence that President Tinubu exuded, that everything he promised are within reach because of who he is.

Many can convincingly argue that one year is too short a period to assess the performance of an administration, and there are innumerable evidences in the long history of this unlucky country with leaders that wasted opportunities and ruined hopes in spite of many years they spent in power.

Having started as a series of my opinions ‘If I Were Tinubu’ shortly after the 2023 general elections that metamorphosed into a book – Tinubu The Audacity To Hope, that envisaged the great challenges he would face along with the accompanying hardship and practical solutions, using this as a barometer I may be unfairly classified among those that should be able to assess the administration coming a year after.

However, one fact about a prophesy is that there must always be an outcome. It either comes to pass or turn out as something that was presumptuously said which may not materialize.

With everyone consciously or unconsciously prep by prejudice like a shadow, it will be very tough to present a fair assessment of this administration, more so at a time of great hardship when many cannot imagine their current plight is the product of leaders that meant well.

Tinubu may be the only one perfectly qualified to assess himself after this one year being the dreamer and the visionary. As a visionary, he is who he is by the reason of what he saw and sold as hope.

Therefore, anyone that wants to correctly assess the President one year after must go beyond reading his mind, but try to find a way of sneaking into it and his conscience so as to be able to peep into what he is seeing with the universally acceptable mode of assessing students being to set exams and mark their scripts, human psychology will remind us that what was not said speaks volume if we care to read from body language and other means.

The occasion of the inauguration of the 700km Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway on May 26 was a natural setting to glimpse into the mind of Mr President. For those who cared to look, they may not miss seeing an unapologetic person with strong will and confidence that he knows what he is doing. He even went far to mock his critics that, “Today is my day to boast.”

He went on to add that “The deal is done. The dream is realisable. The determination to build a nation of prosperity is possible. We said we would build this road, and we are determined to do it. Do not be afraid. We will do this road, and it will be a success for Nigeria, and we will do even more of this.”

Reflecting on the spirit behind the pursuit of such a grand project estimated to cost N15 trillion may even help to shed light on how Tinubu’s mind works. There are other branches to the coastal highway which include a spur to the north-central part of the country and another 1,000km Sokoto-Badagry Highway that is expected to connect Sokoto to Badagry in Lagos State and pass through Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, and Oyo States.

The oppositions have been  direct in their criticism of the project from the point of view of the President’s son’s relationship with the contractors. This scrutiny may be justified in the spirit of transparency and corporate governance, but it would have carried more weight if they had hammered on why the rush to fund the highway though public funds when the option of Public Private Partnership (PPP) has not been explored?

What is in Tinubu’s DNA that craves for grand projects may be captured from what he said about the coastal highway that it “would ensure that future generations have a good landmark and memory to treasure while serving as a good precedent set for others to follow in the timely provision of world-class infrastructure. We have a road that will outlive all of us here. That is how to build the future. This project is more than a mere road. It is a symbol of hope, unity, and prosperity.”

In the real sense of it, the coastal highway may have changed the narrative from constant accusation of government for corruption to the choice of what projects to prioritize.

On the general overview of the administration’s performance in year one, one will not miss the fact that the rhetoric on corruption that trailed past governments has fizzled out with the only scare being the one involving Dr Betta Edu, the minister of humanitarian affairs and poverty alleviation over a leaked  memo wherein she asked  the accountant-general of the federation to transfer N585 million to a private account. Of course, President Tinubu swiftly acted by suspending the minister and  directed the EFCC to conduct a thorough investigation into the financial transaction involving the ministry, that nothing is heard again about the probe since January, may sow a seed of doubt over the commitment of the administration to discourage corruption.

The other two prominent corruption cases in the first year were carried over from the previous administration. They are the one involving the former minister of aviation, Hadi Sirika and that of the former CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele which the President had pledged a thorough housecleaning of the “den of malfeasance” the CBN had become.

However, the Betta Edu saga should not rob the President of the credit of the quality of appointments into his cabinet and to government agencies. He has exceeded expectation with the injection of professionals to head most strategic agencies and end the culture of mediocrities in offices that country is known for. The choice of the managers of President’s information and strategies has also been civil. The President has been able to leave out some hawks which public opinion earlier tipped would be his spokespersons. The advice in my book then was “Those that must be speaking for the President and the country must be people that have compassion, people that know the value and care for human beings. They must be people that are conscious of the place of black man in history for the African dream which Nigeria has suppressed to finally come to reality. When speaking for the President or the country, it must be with humility, clarity, grace, hope and confidence to inspire all Nigerians and in extension Africans on the truth and our heritage that it’s a new dawn to fulfill destiny.”

From the home front, the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu who I recommended to be the prayer warrior for the administration, also deserves commendation as she has not been obstructive in going about her tasks to empower women to the best of her ability. The highest point of her year one was her response in Bauchi to a  threat by a cleric that she deserved to die for her Christian faith, when she said, “I am too old to be afraid. If God has granted me over 60 years on earth, I shouldn’t fear death.”

On Tinubunomic, one must acknowledge that the President inherited an economy inflicted with fuel scarcity, naira redesign crisis, bad roads, poor power supply, joblessness among others things that make life miserable for citizens. But the fact that life have become tougher for Nigerians one year after will make it difficult to convince many that the Tinubunomic magic is working.

All the major political parties were on the same page to remove fuel subsidy during the general election, but no one knew how painful and disruptive it would be until it was done by the President. It has been dragging to get the Dangote Refinery to start fuel supply into the market while the Port Harcourt Refinery too is yet to deliver. When they eventually do, they should help to guarantee stable fuel supply, not necessarily sharp drop in prices. But the biggest gain will be the saving of about $25 billion being spent yearly to import petroleum and other refined products.

In fact, the $25 billion saving will come as a big relief for the CBN to manage foreign exchange reserves and naira value which got out of hand and depreciated close to N2,000 against the dollars during the year.

The government had faced an uphill task battling inflation during the year as it soared to 33.69% in April 2024. The Federal Government was forced in August last year to approve N5 billion for each state and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as palliative to enable them procure food items for distribution to the poor in their states.

The high inflation and naira devaluation have crippled the purchasing power thereby forcing wage increase demand by labour as they embark on strikes to achieve their objectives. Eventually, the labour will soon get wage increase, but many believe the implementation of a substantial new minimum wage will further increase inflation, job loss and possible recession.

On oil and gas, the President has been bullish with the signing of Executive Orders to provide fiscal incentives for non-associated gas, midstream and deepwater oil and gas and also to transform the gas and energy sectors of the economy. Operators are excited with the Executive Order that streamlines contracting processes, procedures, and timelines from 36 months to six months.

The issue with the electricity sector is more complex as it requires huge investment and long time for projects completion, which explains the sharp resistance to tariff increase by labour when regular power supply has not been achieved, along with other economic challenges facing the masses. While the President has been applauded for signing of the Nigeria Electricity Act 2023 which accommodate the participation of the states in the sector, quickly followed by the Electricity Act (Amendment) Bill 2024 which addresses the development and environmental concerns of host communities, my recommendation that the government should get Siemens of Germany to deliver in the deal to increase electricity generation to 25,000MW in six years is still valid.

The President really deserves commendation for the signing of Student Loan Amendment Bill of 2024 after ensuring the repeal of the Students Loans Act of 2023 which he earlier signed. Ordinarily, other leaders would have left the Act as it was since it was recently signed and allowed its shortcomings to linger on with the noble objectives buried in government bureaucracy. But by returning the Act to be repealed underlines the seriousness of the President to prioritise the well-being of Nigerian children while recognising education as a key weapon against poverty. The Student Loan may stand out as the greatest achievement of the President in his first year and the best thing that ever happened to Nigerian children. With the Student Loan, parents that will not mind to steal in offices just to be able to pay school fees can now breathe a sigh of relief.

While it’s acknowledged that the administration has been brave with forex management through the liberalization of naira, the progress with payment of foreign airlines’ trapped funds along with positive outlook for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), one can say out that there are still much to be done in the areas of productivity, agriculture, blue economy and cost of governance.

I wrote that national productivity growth rate remains low due to  infrastructure deficit, unemployment, constant strike actions, brain drain, insecurity among others. Agriculture should be the saving grace for government to solve the forex scarcity, unemployment and hunger. It cannot be practically seen yet that the government has gotten it right with agriculture as the prices of food have gone beyond the reach of the citizens. I also wrote in my book then that “There are some exportable agricultural products that keep on having growing global demands which Nigeria has the right climate to produce to quickly bridge its foreign exchange gap in few years. The Tinubu government can return to agriculture and make it the number one foreign exchange earner for the country by attracting investments and partnering the state governments based on the agricultural products they are the best at. The farm settlements that the government will promote should be mechanized, modernized with all amenities in the cities such as sporting and recreation centers with cable TV among others to attract youths and help solve unemployment problem.”

As for the cost of governance, the President has made the right move with a ban on all foreign trips by ministers and other government officials with exemption to trips deemed absolutely necessary. As the ban to last 90 days from 1 April, 2024 will lapse by the end of this June, the question is what next? Many observers believe that cutting the cost of governance can be more broader to capture the National Assembly who are living large and had  bought expensive luxury sport utility vehicles for its 469 members despite the tough economic situation Nigerians are grappling with.

But one of the positive things that can be take away from the first year of President Tinubu is the revelation of his preparedness for the job and his commitment to deliver. He said a couple of times during the year that people should not pity him as he asked for the job. He has been humble, fearless, revolutionary and selfless like someone that knows the secret of fear. He has shown that he is a team player who is open to fresh ideas as he had even commended his hard working minister, Nyesom Wike for being a very good team leader, saying, “we all collectively will not let you down,”

In fact, this is one of the most important times in the history of Nigeria, more so that we still have four former heads of state alive to witness and reflect on what fear and selfishness had cost them from doing for this country, and for the aspiring leaders to learn that they can make a difference and leave a legacy for the generations yet unborn.

*Segun Adeleye, President/CEO World Stage Limited is the author of Tinubu The Audacity To Hope and other books.

The proposal by the Federal Government to grant full Autonomy to the local governments in Nigeria is a welcome development and long overdue.

I commend the Federal government whose Attorney General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN has approached the Supreme Court to pursue this landmark initiative.

There is no doubt that our Democratic journey has been very slow due to lack of Autonomy for the third tier of government as practised in other Democratic climes.

The office of the Attorney General of the Federation should however, bear in mind the ambiguity in the 4^th schedule and section 7 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which recognised local governments as the third tier of government but also in a contradictory manner gives some functions to State Government and Houses of Assembly with regards to Local Government Administration. This and other contradictory clauses need to be amended to reflect the complete financial and Administrative autonomy as it’s been operated in other federal system.

I commend the leadership of president Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR for this bold step and urge him to go all out to break this jinx by removing the clog in the wheel of our development and progress. You can imagine the impact that will be created if 774 local governments are independent and free from the apron spring of the state governments. Nigerians will immediately start enjoying the dividends of democracy directly across the country in all the 774 Local Governments and also have a say in determining the Political leadership at their Local Governments. The fact that every Nigerian lives in a local Government underscores the strategic importance of granting full  autonomy to the Local Governments. The benefit of this initiative is huge and should be supported by all well-meaning Nigerians.

The important benefit of this initiative is that it will attract more quality personalities to take part in the running of Local Governments and reduce the emphasis on the State and Federal Governments thereby widening the space for political inclusiveness. This will invariably reduce the burden on Federal and State Governments allowing them to focus on broader policy issues.

Other benefits of Local Governments autonomy includes the power to govern and make decisions independently which can lead to efficient service delivery, it will also foster transparency and accountability as Local Governments will be responsible for their decisions, finances and actions leading to better governance. It will strengthen our democratic institutions by ensuring a more equitable distribution of power and resources. Finally, Local Governments being the closest to the people are in a better position to understand the needs of their community and provide same.

In summary, granting full autonomy to local governments in Nigeria will lead to better governance, increased citizens participation, improved service delivery, and accelerate development at the grassroots level. This is no doubt the way to go in our determination to achieve good governance and development.

Dr Ade Dosunmu, MON, a Public Policy Expert and Ex- Director General, NIMASA, wrote from Lagos.