Deputy President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and National President of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), Comrade Promise Adewusi, spoke with Soji Eze-Fagbemi on issues of national and workers interests, especially the general election as well as workers participation, and advises government on important issues.What is your assessment of the 2011 general electionsI must say that there is a clear shift in the conduct of the 2011 general elections, particularly when you juxtapose it with the past elections in the country. We also want to say that we Labour movement can beat our chest and say that within our family, we were able to produce somebody that made Nigeria proud by conducting free, fair and credible elections. We say this with all sense of modesty and responsibility because even the international and local observers have supported this view so far and one can easily pattern the transparency of the process. So, first, I want to say that Nigerians have come of age because if you look at the pattern of the election results, you will see that Nigerians are no longer influenced by the ruling party, because when in the past the dominant party won elections, you will see it winning everywhere. This one is deferent because Nigerians did not vote for parties but for credible individuals and personalities. This is one thing that can take us away from the politics of yesterday. This is why we are commending the Jega led-INEC for bringing this to the country and we are happy for that even though we have not reached the level we desire in terms of electoral process management, but we are right on track towards getting there. The elections have been free and fair and that is why whoever is crying of warped process could just be doing that because the elections have been very free to the average observers.Comrade, one of the things noticed during the elections was high number of invalid votes and that has been attributed to lack of adequate voters education, how will you advise Jega on this in case of future electionsIn terms of voters education, I dont think any far reaching reform will be made without using the instrumentality of both the print and broadcast media to increase the awareness of voters, and that is what what we, in the Labour movement, have been crying for, for a long time. Voters education is not what you will just start two days to the election. It is supposed to be an entrenched system which should have started a year ago. Having said that, I think the inadequacy of general awareness, particularly the voters education, could be one factor responsible for the high number of voided votes, but again, you will also recall that it was due to the emergency nature of the process. If you look at the period between the appointment of Jega and when he started the management process, you will discover that the time was short for him to do a whole lot of things.You will notice that one of the reasons most votes were voided was due to the bloating nature of ink and paper. If you thumb print and fold immediately, once it touches another box, it will be seen as double voting, that ballot is voided vote. Again, one would have expected the electoral officers before the elections to, maybe, take 10 minutes to address the voters on the sensitivity of the ballot papers.The voters should have been told not to fold the papers immediately they thumb printed, because if they folded it inward, it was likely to touch the others. The process must begin immediately the general elections end.Nigerians and the international community have been commending Jega for the process, but dont you think the man at the helms of affairs, President Jonathan, truly wanted credible electionsYes, in the first place, who appointed Jega He could have appointed anyone else. But he took his time with good counsel by Nigerians who mean well for this country. This is again one thing about recycling known faces. You can see that Jega is fresh as far as this process is concerned, and he came with fresh ideas. But if he (the President) had taken someone who has always been there, probably it might have ended up the same way it used to be in the past. There is so much in the name Goodluck and this may be truly following President Goodluck Jonathan. You also see that he did everything within the time frame to ensure INEC never lacked anything.I believe if he didnt want free and fair elections, it was very easy to starve INEC of the necessary funds; but he made sure that the money that was budgeted for them was released without any delay because he believed in that process. And if you look at his campaign, it was clean, mainly based on issues, and the campaign of incumbency did not heat up the polity by bringing in some degree of uncertainty, violence or irregularities in the elections. There are other people who could have incited the opponents to infringe on INECs independence, but he gave the commission a free hand. As President, who is responsible for releasing the resources needed, he allowed them to run their programmes without any control, and this was one critical element that was missing in the past administration because someone sat somewhere and directed the INEC chairman to manipulate the processes, but for these elections, he completely distanced himself from the commission and concentrated as a candidate.What does the Labour movement expect from the President in the next four yearsMy candid advice to the President in the next four years is that as he takes off, the issue of the national minimum wage should be clarified because up till now, we have not sighted the signed copy of the bill. Even though we trust our President on this, our members are worried. What is the effective date All these can only be addressed when we sight the signed copy of the bill.There are insinuations here and there that the government has inserted a differentiated salary between federal and state workers. Though the Minister of Labour has come out to clear the air that the N18,000 minimum wage is binding on every state government, some state governments have come out to say that if the monthly revenue formula is not reviewed, they cannot pay the new wage and this is worrisome. It is like keeping labour in suspense, and we do not want to act out of context, considering the elections; otherwise, we would have demanded that we see the signed copy because we had expected that the minimum wage would take effect from January. The President should clear all these as soon as he settles down, and should not allow that to degenerate into Labour and government controversy. Secondly, we also expect the President Jonathan and his agents to recognise, implement and respect every agreement reached with the workers to ensure industrial peace within the country.We also expect the President to put in place those necessary mechanisms that will create job in the country and that would also stop mass retrenchment either from the public or private sector, because if we are talking about creating opportunities for employment and you are sacking people, it is like giving with right hand and then taking back with the left. This, however, is key to education because this should be the driver of our developmental programmes, and what we expect of our country tomorrow is to be great through the value placed on education today. It is very important that we look at restructuring our education curriculum by making it realistic and practical based and not only theory. We also need to enhance the information technology (IT) content of our education so that right from nursery school, the children are well acquainted with IT mechanism. For instance, during these elections, we were told that some youth corpers were handling computers for the first time during the registration process and that almost made it rough. So, we must move from the culture of just cramming books to the culture of practical education, and this should be within the school. No matter what you read, there should be some practicals to it so that everybody will not depend on white-collar jobs and that way, people will no longer look down on certain vocations as meant for only drop outs, and once that is inculcated into the school curriculum, they will know that you dont have to be a drop out to engage in such a programme.Also, if you look at multinationals, the people they bring in are technocrats, but we lack this level of skills in our school curricula. That is why it is important. So, Mr. President should do something with education by ensuring the placement of practical curricula as a country that wants to be among the most 20 developed nations by year 2020. And again, he must do all he can to revive the private sector by ensuring that power is constant, because Nigeria, for now, is still a generator driven economy and we all know without power no economy can actually thrives. So, he must ensure the sector is improved. He must also take steps to look at our agreement with the World Trade Organisation (WTO), especially the one that allows every product to come into the country and compete with us. I dont think Nigeria is ripe for that now because most of these Asian countries are importing all kinds of textile materials into the country, and even with the N100 billion bailouts, our local industries cannot survive.
Click here to read full news..
