Factional President of Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and time, Joe Ajaero, who ran for the post of the president in the controversial Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) election, speaks with Assistant Politics Editor, DANIEL KANU, on the controversial election, Nigerian politics and his life as an activist.
The NLC election
I do not want to continue to talk about it again. It was a sham. Various Labour unions have already dissociated themselves from the outcome of the charade. But we are still meeting on the issue and will make our position public in due time.
Views on Nigerian politics
I don’t think Nigeria will end in 2015. Anybody that is elected president of Nigeria, we will go ahead with the person. We are going to put our demand straight to him, that the country be fixed. I think that is the only thing that is important. However, between the two major political parties, I can’t say any has proper programmes for the working class. I have not seen their welfarist disposition. I have seen a lot of confusion, people commending those constructing roads, as if that is not their major job, as if they are using their personal finances to do so. I see the level of unemployment, and it worries me. I see the level of people passing out of schools with no jobs to do. I think we should sit down and find a way of addressing them. You can’t talk of curtailing Boko Haram or any of these militant organisations without creating jobs for people. That is the main area. It is not entirely who is at the helm of affairs; it is the issue of addressing the problem of hunger, the problem of destitution.
I think if we have any contract with the Bretton Wood institutions, we should find out whether they are favouring us. If there are loans that we have collected that are affecting our economy, we should equally look at them. Most Nigerians who have made billions should be able to invest here, so that people can get jobs. That is why I commend those few Nigerians who have set up one thing or another here in the country. For every Nigerian that employs eight or nine people, the person is helping in solving the problem. There would have been a great problem if the number of churches and mosques we have in the country are not increasing, preaching to the people to be calm, that there is hope for tomorrow.
Equally, we can address the issue of what goes to the National Assembly in terms of resources. We should equally make those engagements to be on part-time basis. People who are lawyers, who are medical doctors, who are unionists, should do their (National Assembly) jobs. And may be, go there once a week and get their sitting allowances. If we do that, we will be saving a whole lot of money that will enable us pay unemployment benefit to people, even as much as N10,000. We can sit down and discuss how best to address these problems. I know the elections come and go, but I am charging the winners, particularly the president, to ensure that the people are given priority attention.
Tackling the incidence of casualisation in the nation’s industries
It is a big evil. That was the problem I had with the person who ran against me. For four years, he happened to be the chairman of anti-casualisation committee, and nothing has happened. But in my sector, even before privatisation, for those on contract jobs, we fought, insisted, that their employment must be regularised. In a nutshell, casualisation is second slavery. And these multi-nationals and Nigerians practising it don’t mean well for the economy. Even the laws of this land frown at it. You can’t keep a worker perpetually as casual staff. I think it is an area that we must look at. From where I am coming, we have addressed this significantly, except of late that it is trying to rear its head after privatisation. We are trying to find out where it is happening to address them.
Power workers’ outstanding packages
I don’t think that those government officials are fair, unless they are living outside the power sector. I know that over 5,000 people have not been paid their pension and gratuity. I know that no arrangement has been made for those incapacitated, because there are people who have suffered various forms of amputation and some paralysis as a result of electrocution by virtue of their work. Nobody has made any provision for them in the post-privatisation era. I know that the Act is clear. The workers are entitled to 10 per cent equity share. I know that has not happened. It will be wrong to say that everybody has been paid. I equally know that every staff was underpaid, every of the almost 50,000 staff was underpaid by 16 months. I know that some weeks ago there was a verification exercise and thousands of people trooped out with their documents. Each time we protest, they come up with verification, pay few people and stop again. And they have been trying to blackmail us that we don’t want these new investors to succeed. That is why we have been slowing down. They have not paid everybody, and if we take any action now, they will say we are the people responsible for it. But we have been pushing to make sure that everybody is paid.
State of power supply in the country
Well, I am so worried because before the privatisation, I said I was not going to talk again. The level of power poverty is so high. The global standard is that there should be 1,000 megawatts for every one million people. But today, we have over 160 million Nigerians with less than 4,000 megawatts. And the situation is getting worse by the day. And I say that the private sector cannot provide electricity as a social service. The private sector does not have the capital required to develop the economy, industrialise Nigeria. But the government thought otherwise and handed it over to the private sector. I am not aware of any new power station that is being constructed today by the private sector, except the ones government had concluded before and is thinking of commissioning. That is the only thing I know.
I am equally aware that a lot of billions, if not all the amount that they paid to take over the sector, has equally been given back to them, as well as equipment, transformers and so on to enable them perform, and nothing is forth-coming. I argued then that there should be availability before you talk of accessibility and affordability. And based on that, the private sector cannot guarantee that; that if Nigerian government tries to make sure that there is power available, who runs it won’t be a problem.
In South Africa, you have about 43,000 megawatts. Even today, they are talking about power cut. But they are trying to meet up with the policy of 1omillion people for 1,000 megawatts. And that 43,000 megawatts is 100 per cent by the South African government. I equally argued that in the United States (U.S.), the home of capitalism, 250,000 megawatts is produced by the government. And after that, the municipals, the private sectors, the states, now generate their own to meet up with their target of one million megawatts. What that means is that you can’t blackmail the government of the U.S. because if the worst happens, they make sure the 250,000 megawatts is available at least for the less-privileged, for the hospitals, for military installations, for schools.
But in our situation, if you watch what happened during the fuel scarcity, if the private people say they will not import fuel, the country will suffer. If the private sector in the case of electricity says that the tariff must be N1,000 per kilowatt of hour, and the government says no, then there will be no electricity. I argued then that there should be what we call base power – that even the government should keep the 4,000 it is generating. And since you have licensed the private sector, even if they generate 100,000 megawatts, Nigeria will take it. And then let us have this 4,000 megawatts still under government control.
Rather, what they did was to transfer public monopoly to private monopoly. So they transferred the 4,000 megawatts to private individuals. That is not privatisation. No new megawatts has entered into the system. I don’t know how that will be a solution to the problem. If you ask me, I will advocate a summit where some of us who are critical stakeholders should come out and say the things the way they are. Else if we continue to hide this way, Nigerians will continue to pay dearly for no power. If you watch it, you will start to wonder why we should privatise without first of all metering the country. Now, you leave them (Nigerians) to the vagaries of the market and the dictates of the private sector. At one place, you pay N20,000 and there you also pay N10,000 because it is not metered. Those are areas they could have covered through the regulatory commission before handing it over to the private sector. That is my fear. Come to think of it, the private sector took over the sector for profit maximisation. They are not Fr. Christmas. So, if it is 4,000 megawatts they have, they will make all the profit on 4,000 megawatts, increase tariff every three years because some of them borrowed from banks. And they are paying. When the interest rate increases, it is from the consumers they will make the money.
Life of agitation, from university days to days in the media, till date
I think you got it right. Even before I entered secondary school, from the village life as a young man, we started challenging the status quo. In the secondary school, I became a social prefect. In the College of Education and university, and like you said, up till now, I have been a unionist. And incidentally, it has been life of asking questions; it is not life of trouble-making. Most of this period, it is not like there is anything I want as a person, but how to address situations in the society. That might be why I came into this earth, to make sure we better the society. If we fail to do that before we leave this planet, then we have not achieved anything. So it has been a life of activism from the school days; in the media when I was in Vanguard Newspapers as their chairman, as a national officer of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). If you ask those either in PHCN or Vanguard or anywhere where we have worked, they will tell you that if you were earning N20 when we came in, we tried to make sure you earned extra. If we were being subjected to harsh conditions, we made sure we changed them, not through the use of brutal force, but through constructive engagement.
