Kaduna after the storm

 When a virulent hurricane slams into an unyielding rock like the Gibraltar, the turf of encounter gets severely weather beaten though neither the rock nor the wild storm become overawed, but neither could as well claim to emerge better off from the tangle. That is what has happened in Kaduna State following last week’s showdown between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) led by Ayuba Wabba and the administration of Governor Nasir el-Rufai. Many sane hours now after that face-off, both sides must be wondering whether what’s been gained was worth the economic and human loss to the bullish rage, more so that they’ve only gone as far as where they should have started out if common sense had prevailed.

Later in the week, the state government and labour congress were herded back to the negotiation table where they had postured on not stooping to – thanks to mediation by Labour Minister Chris Ngige. The pie seems more humble on the part of the el-Rufai administration that had carried on in presumed exclusive knowledge of what was good and needful – allegedly, inevitably so – for the state. At the minister’s instance, the contending parties have raised a dialogue team to examine issues in the dispute and reach mutual understanding, and peace has for now returned to the state whose residents were under siege.    

Labour had rolled out the tanks last Monday in what was to be a five-day warning strike in the state to protest alleged anti-worker practices by el-Rufai, notably his administration’s plan to offload thousands of employees from its workforce. The unionists aimed at forcing the state government to back down, but the administration forewarned it would not yield and stuck to its guns. Life was literally shuttered in the state as electricity, water and fuel supplies were cut; hospitals, schools, banks and other services shut; even air and rail transportation tossed as workers pulled their services. Wabba also led workers on street marches to ratchet up pressure on government, which for its part held firm on not backtracking. It was after three days of hostilities the presidency waded in to broker a truce, upon which labour sheathed sword to make room for negotiation.

Not that both sides didn’t ply compelling arguments from their perches.  The el-Rufai administration said it could no longer use nearly all of its monthly revenue to pay the wages of government employees who constitute only a small fraction of the state population to which it is accountable, hence that it must rightsize to save funds for obligations other than paying salaries. Labour cried foul, however, because throwing off workers at will appeared to have become a pastime of the Kaduna government, with some workers previously retrenched allegedly yet to be paid their terminal benefits. NLC further argued that unions representing workers to be affected in the new layoff had not been negotiated with by the state government as prescribed by labour laws. And whereas the el-Rufai administration claimed it had not determined the number of workers to be dumped, congress cited correspondences indicating that those on firing line can’t be fewer than 7,000. But government too had its beef with labour: there could have been a last-minute parley to try averting the showdown but for labour’s alleged bully tactics. For instance, while both sides were to meet penultimate Sunday evening ahead of the action slated to kick in the following day, electricity supply to the state was cut off earlier that Sunday, which government said was like holding a gun to its head at the negotiation table. It vowed not playing ball.

When labour warriors eventually hit the trenches on Monday, the el-Rufai administration got more feral in stance rather than be cowed; it argued that what the workers were up to was a campaign of social and economic sabotage rather than an industrial action, insisting that essential services were forbidden under labour laws from joining the strike. In a tweet on his personal handle, the governor declared Wabba and other NLC national leaders wanted under the Miscellaneous Offences Act for alleged economic sabotage and attacks on public infrastructure. He urged anyone who knew their whereabouts to contact the state justice ministry, promising there would be “a handsome reward.” That tack was in part comical, however, because at the time el-Rufai was posting his tweet, Wabba was on the streets of Kaduna leading a march by workers. On no account were his whereabouts unknown. At some point on Day 2 of the strike when armed thugs attacked the Wabba-led protesters, law enforcement agents were right there to chase off the thugs with teargas and enable the workers to continue with their peaceful protest. And it was before media klieglights that Wabba, in reaction to being declared wanted, dared the state government to come arrest him.

“NLC-Kaduna row: They’ve only gone as far as where they should have started out if common sense had prevailed.”

Meanwhile, the Kaduna governor on Tuesday ordered the sack of all nurses below salary grade level 14 on the state’s payroll for joining the strike, and he directed the health ministry to advertise vacancies for immediate recruitment of new nurses to replace those dismissed. A spokesman for the government said salaries that could have been paid to the dismissed nurses would be given as extraordinary occupational allowances to health workers who remained at their duty posts. The sack order was allegedly linked to the discovery that nurses in one of the state’s hospitals disconnected oxygen from a two-day old baby in an incubator when they joined the strike; but the nurses’ union has since refuted that narrative. Reports also said the governor sacked all Kaduna State University lecturers and directed ministries, departments and agencies of the state to submit registers of workers’ attendance to the Head of Service.

Amidst the hostilities, both sides contested fiercely for public buy-in to their respective argument. Labour acknowledged that it was putting Kaduna residents through hell by its industrial action but wanted them to see that government forced it upon them. Government, for its part, portrayed the unionists as lawless activists living in denial of the state’s realities and on a mission of criminal sabotage. Indeed, the Kaduna governor brooked no equivocation from those he expected outright support. When the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) issued a statement urging cautious introspection on the part of labour and saying no meaningful progress could be achieved amidst conflict and chaos, he upbraided the forum for being diplomatic. “I am one of you. The least I expect from the (NGF) is unequivocal and unqualified support. I didn’t see that in that statement,” he said at a virtual meeting of the forum.

When the presidency intervened few days after, the path it charted out of the row was to steer the contending parties back to dialogue; and you would want to ask why they shunned / preempted that option in the first place. The industrial action by NLC inflicted untold hardship on the entire Kaduna populace, of which workers whose interest were being defended constitute less than a quarter. Manhours and material resources were lost to shutdown of essential services by private operators, and it isn’t beyond contemplation that some patients died in grounded hospitals. Labour must be sensitive to this disproportionate collateral damage and be more restrained in fighting future battles. Besides, the reality of technology dictate realignments in workforces and labour should wise up. 

But harsher word is reserved for el-Rufai: he takes more of the blame because he apparently considers governance to be a function of available facts and data, not humanistic sentiments. It was in that mindset, apparently, that the NGF panel he headed has just proposed that the price for domestic consumption of petrol be fixed at between N380 and N408.5 per litre to reflect wild forces of the global market, just so that so-called under-recovery cost of the current tariff could be eliminated and government could get more money to spend. In making that proposal, their excellencies were indifferent to the murderous impact such price regime and its inflationary knock-on effect would have on the average Nigerian’s economy. Well, good governance must be people-centred, and consideration for people’s welfare must, if necessary, override hard facts and data for governance to be deemed beneficial. Shall we call that GS101?