Cheta Nwanze: Unpaid Wages Prohibition Bill – We should look at proper pay too (Y! FrontPage)

by Cheta Nwanze

Chxta back

To a lot of people, and for sentimental reasons, Murtala Mohammed is a national hero. To me, he is not. For the records, the massacre at Asaba on October 7, 1967 was carried out by troops under his command, and despite the fact that he was not present during the actual shooting; no one was disciplined for those actions.

As of yesterday, there is a Bill in front of our National Assembly to punish employers for not paying their staff. As someone who has (like most Nigerian workers), gone through the whole shenanigans of delayed wages, and then outright lack of payment, I am in full support of this Bill. But there is a small aspect that we are forgetting, proper remuneration.

In the 1995 movie, The American President, President Shepherd offered consultant Sydney Wade a job in the White House so he could be closer to her. Sydney, a high powered lobbyist declines on the grounds that the country could not afford to pay her.

In 2009, the White House in the United States released a list of all its members of staff. At about the same time in Nigeria, President Yar’Adua was ordering cutbacks to the salaries of the top echelon of the civil service in Nigeria. Most people felt that Yar’Adua did the right thing. I disagree. You see, according to the White House list, the President’s Chief of Staff as an example, was earning $172k a year, a salary which meant that Wall Street could not easily tempt him away from his job, and which more importantly meant that he does not have to worry about the rain leaking through his roof.

In the UK as another example, Sharon Shoesmith of Haringey Council used to pocket about £100k a year before she was dismissed. An amount that I know the value of especially as I used to work in that country.

In Nigeria, our government still talks of paying its top earners N2M per year (officially at least), then Yar’Adua reduced that, then President Jonathan, in the wake of the Occupy Nigeria riots cut that by a further 25%! Not the brightest of moves.

In September of 1975, a funeral was held at a house in Ebute Metta. The funeral was of a man named Obimbgo who was meant to have been the new tenant at that address. What was quite interesting about it was that Mr. Obimgbo had never lived in that house. On the morning of the day that he was meant to have finally moved in, he did not wake up from his sleep. He had passed away quietly. As is usual in most Nigerian deaths, no autopsy was performed, so the exact cause of death was never determined, but from all indications, Mr. Obimgbo died of a stroke. You see, he was entering into the great unknown after a life of certainty and stability, and at his age (he was around 50), he could not figure out where to go or what to do, especially having lived in Ikoyi since his youth. Mr. Obimgbo was one of more than 10,000 public officials and employees who were dismissed without benefits, on account of age, health, alleged incompetence, or alleged malpractice.

The purge affected the civil service, judiciary, police and armed forces, diplomatic service, public corporations, and universities, and was the action of the regime of Murtala Ramat Mohammed, the man who adorns Nigeria’s twenty Naira note.

To a lot of people, and for sentimental reasons, Murtala Mohammed is a national hero. To me, he is not. For the records, the massacre at Asaba on October 7, 1967 was carried out by troops under his command, and despite the fact that he was not present during the actual shooting; no one was disciplined for those actions. A few weeks later, troops under his command also committed another atrocity, this time in Onitsha. But that is a discussion for another day and time…

When Murtala became Head of State of Nigeria, his first action was to sweep off the old guard of people who had worked under Yakubu Gowon. While I understand the action of retiring persons like Gowon, Wey, Katsina, Ejoor, Soroh, Ikwue, Salem and Fagbola, the action of retiring all officers of the rank of Major General and above effectively left the Army without guidance. After purging the Army, he turned on the Civil Service and did a whole raft of retirements, most of them, like Mr. Obimgbo, were essentially dismissed summarily, and expected to move out of their staff quarters with not a penny in their pockets. Nigeria is still paying for that action until this day.

The Nigeria Civil Service was modelled after the Civil Service of the United Kingdom. In the UK, only the best brains are allowed into the Civil Service and this after rigorous examinations. Once in, these people are essentially assured of being set for life. They are well paid, and well taken care of. Their pensions are not messed with. This is because the Civil Service is the engine that runs the country. Politicians come and go, but the civil servant remains in place, rising through the ranks, learning where the mines are, and defusing them. As long as there is an efficient Civil Service behind the country’s executive, there will always be a smooth transition from one government to the next, projects will always get done on time and life will be steady and stable. The importance of these ingredients in a nation’s life cannot be overstated. It was the same in Nigeria prior to 1975. Civil Service  examinations were attended by the best our schools had churned out, and those who were lucky (and good) enough to be taken were assured of a car loan, a house set aside for them in government reservation areas and most importantly perhaps, a pension for the rainy days when they were no longer in service.

The Murtala Mohammed regime’s rash action in dismissing so many without any benefits turned the Nigeria Civil Service on its head. The younger civil servants (not to talk of military officers) who were watching what became of their seniors such as Mr. Obimgbo took the lesson to heart, and took it to heart quite well. Whereas in the First Republic and during the Gowon era, corruption had always been simmering below the surface, only practiced openly by the so called big shots, it became an institutional thing from 1975 onwards, because people by nature have to set something aside for a rainy day. While in 1956, characters such as Obi Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s No Longer At Ease could be sent to prison for abuse of position, by 1985 abuse of position had damn well become the language of business in Nigeria.

Things got worse with the collapse of oil prices in the early 1980s when Nigerians suddenly became very poor. But Babangida’s actions are a story for another day. What is essential now is to recover our Civil Service. Nigeria cannot hope to even begin to recover if the Civil Service continues to attract people who were essentially the consistent worse performers from Primary School through to Secondary School. The first step towards attracting the brightest and the best though, must begin with proper remuneration.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

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