Comrade David Kayode Ehindero is the executive director/ lead strategist of the Nigerians Workforce Strategy and Enlightenment Centre (NIWOSEC). In this interview with TOPE SUNDAY he backs clamour for new minimum wage, stating that governors who don’t implement new wage don’t have conscience.
What is your position on the clamour for the implementation of the new minimum wage?
I am very much in support of the call for increment of minimum wage in Nigeria because it is overdue. I wouldn’t have supported it under any circumstances if the situation is normal, but we are in a situation where everything has increased; the salaries of workers are no longer in tandem with the economic realities.
Every worker has to meet his basic needs of life, no matter the work he does. A situation where the forces of demand and supply are no longer working for workers, there are a lot of products available but the economic power, the ability of worker to chase those product has reduced drastically. So, it is high time that the government increased the minimum wage. And for the mere fact that it has been in agreement that government should review salary every five years.
However, reviewing salary sometimes does not mean it should be increased if the economy has been better and there is no inflation.
So, given the reality on ground do you think new minimum wage is the way out?
New minimum wage is the next thing because if you raise their wage it will spread to other jobs, and once you raise the wage of the Nigerian workers, people working at private firm, the artisans will automatically gain from it and it will spread to every part of the economy. Market women will also gain from it.
The first responsibility government should think of, is to think about the welfare of its workers and any system that does not take care of human welfare is a bad one.
The organised Labour has said that any governor that fails to implement minimum wage would be voted out. What is your take on this?
I am in support of the call because that means that governors that do not implement the new minimum wage don’t have conscience. It is very unfortunate. Let me tell you most governors are governors of the poor people and I don’t know how they are taking pride in being governors of the poor. They are the only rich people in the midst of so many poor workers and that is why the information in the arena is so spurious.
They are going about the wage issue all less concerned and not bothered about the people’s welfare. Governors have their pride as being the governors of the poor and if it so, it is important that Nigerian workers should gather their strength and vote out the governments that are not magnanimous, that lack conscience of a man. That is why I commend what President Buhari said that “he wonders how those governors sleep without paying people salary” and they have a lot of leakages where they spend their money unnecessarily. They do a lot of things that are really in excess.
Casualisation is fast becoming acceptable in Nigeria how can this be curbed?
Yes, there is casualisation in the system and it is very unfortunate that it has started coming back to the Nigerian work system. It has gone before but some people have started coming with contract workers.
That is the system where they don’t think about the future of the workers. They just use them and dump. That kind of system should be highly discouraged and it should not be allowed to reign. In fact, let me tell you something, we need a total restructured of the system of work in Nigeria so that Nigeria can become our own Nigeria and other countries can invite us to grow their own nations too.
When we talk about restructuring, it’s not about only restructuring the political system, no, there has to be work restructuring. Nigeria has millions of unemployed graduates because they are not using them in their area of specialization.
I wonder a situation where somebody will be saying we have jobless people why will they say so when we have job to do. We are in a system where you employ people to do nothing. Look at our civil service system, a lot of people are employed to do nothing they will now waste their 35 years in the service and now become useless to themselves and their families.
They will live a life of dissatisfaction and be angry with themselves. So, that is why we need total job restructuring. You have system where the pension is not coming forth. A year to your retirement they will organise a pension training for you and after retirement at 60 the system will now say you should go back to work and think of the business to do at 60.
We should create a work system that will make people to do something before retirement. In fact, we suppose to go on three years’ retirement leave before retirement. We need a total work restructuring both in private and public sector.
Are you advocating that three-year retirement leave?
Yes, a three-year leave before retirement should be given so as to allow them to grow the kind of business they desire not the kind of emergency approach that you push them out of service and the full money is not paid on time. Most of them cannot even build houses from the money.
So, I am saying that we should have a total over view of our work system from the beginning of the service to the retirement stage because the truth is that time is money. We must teach Nigerians to put something to time not to waste their time. So, that is why I am clamouring for a total restructuring of work system in Nigeria.
What will you suggest as the solution to casualisation of the workers in Nigeria?
The solution is the restructuring for us to use our people to do the right work and let them be paid for doing well. Casualisation is not acceptable as part of the international Labour rules. It should not be allowed.
Casualisation is not acceptable anywhere, we should work against it. I call on Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to tackle it seriously because it is a killer of humanity.
