President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Mr. Abdulwahed Omar, would have probably counted the successful passage of the Minimum Wage Bill in the National Assembly as one of his achievements as the year winds up.But it is doubtful if the consequent fallouts have not made the bill rather distasteful. The implementation is costing too much than the increment itself can bear. The chain of policy reactions and distractions both at the federal and state levels has not only heated up the polity with varied arguments but caused avoidable discomfort within the Nigerian society. The masses, some of whom may never benefit from the struggle, are holding the shorter end of the stick. First is the on-going debate on the removal of fuel subsidy for which the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan is in the cutting teeth of criticism. The president's economic team in a bid of preempting a possible inflationary reaction, among other technical explanations, sees the removal as expedient. Labour however thinks differently. Nigeria is too rich, too naturally endowed for its citizens to earn anything less than N18,000. And if members of parliament are living big, civil servants who are the geese that lay the golden eggs are no second class citizens. For some of the states that are still lingering and dithering, the alibi is that their credit facilities are too weak to support such salary structure. But as labour is pulling all available strings to subject their Excellencies to the agreement, several state governments, especially in the Niger-Delta, are resorting to crude stratagems and acting unadvisedly.Abia State has tacitly implied it no longer believes in the unity of Nigeria. The government has allegedly given orders that all non-indigenes be sacked and sent back to wherever they came from on the pretext of not having enough to go round. To what level the Federal Government would watch and allow this divisive decree succeed is still a subject for conjecture. The Ebonyi State Government on its part has started suggesting an end to free education in the state beginning with the cessation of financing the certificate exams of its final year secondary school students. The announcement has since thrown a lot of poor families into sober mood and heart-ache. It means more responsibilities, more farm work, more fasting for them. Due to the grinding poverty condition of the state's residents, many of the students in the state secondary schools are the ones financing themselves which also means they will have to double up to meet up. The consequences of these ill-conceived and ill-timed decisions are grave.It's unbelievable that in this prevailing condition of national academic anguish, the Chief Martins Elechi administration could only think of education as the sector to bear the brunt of maximum rage over minimum wage. The NECO/WAEC failure hall of fame has always depicted the dismal and pitiable condition of education in Ebonyi, nay in Nigeria. Many state governments have been making frantic attempts to raise the standard of education in their states and support education more. Against this backdrop, one would have therefore expected that the Ebonyi State Government would put in place excellence-enhancing measures and inducements to arrest poor academic performance and encourage enviable scholarship among its teeming youths. Regrettably, the state government appears too myopic and only sees its minimal educational investment as the means to cushion the effect of minimum wage implementation. The current decision to stop paying for the students' final exams is a huge minus to the state government. The excuse of low federal government allocation thaws when one considers the fact that the state government pays 50 percent of the exams which started barely two years ago. With this decision, many of the students would only be able to write one of both exams thereby jeopardising their chances of university education, depleting the intellectual capacity of the state which leads to a despicable height of underdevelopment.There is another dimension to this sad narrative. Ebonyi State is largely rural, hence majority of its student populace are children of the poor peasants who are not on the payroll of any government parastatal. What this means is that the government wants to rob Peter to pay Paul and the teachers appear impervious to the plights of their innocent students. Ebonyi State workers want the government to pay minimum wage willy-nilly; the means to this end is inconsequential to them. The implication of this mind-numbing subterfuge which I doubt Elechi's government gave serious thought is that once these poor farmers are hard up (their parents are mostly farmers), the effect will boomerang on the economy of the state as the price of agricultural produce will automatically surge.For the minimum wage imbroglio, I am simply at a loss about all these reactions. It is clear by the time the dust settles on all conflicts generated, the status quo will be maintained. The lots of Nigerians may not have been bettered or buttered since monetary increment does not equate financial empowerment or improved standard of living. The truth is that minimum wage is not living wage! Labour should therefore begin to intensify efforts to campaign for policies with lasting values. Many of its frictions with government have been triggered by monetary discontentment. The leadership needs to be more visionary and proactive so there can be tangible improvement in the wellbeing o Nigerians.
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