Again, in the grip of vicious cycle

The country is stumbling from one crisis to the other. The Sword of Damocles which had being hanging over the nation’s neck has been partially put back in its sheath, partially because a governor, Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State only yesterday said that he would not be able to afford the minimum wage of N70, 000 signed into law on Tuesday. In his words, “I cannot pay the N70, 000 minimum wages, and I suspect many other states are in the same predicament.” He blamed his inability to pay on paucity of funds. The new wages level was signed into law in a choke-hold atmosphere of tension, of a nation-wide demonstration organised by civil society organisations to protest troubling economic conditions in the land, what the organisers describe as anti-bad government protest. The protest demonstrations were billed to start yesterday. How appropriate and helpful the timing of the actions is remains to be seen of a land that is just emerging from the enervating foreboding air of a national shut-down by workers unions over minimum wages. The pressure for new wages level was driven by the imperativeness and a determination to confront, head-on, cost-push inflation ravaging the land.

Out of genuine fears of the protests going out of control once they kick off especially in the challenging times in which a great many are on edge, there have been pleas for a rethink by various government functionaries and many powerful voices and institutions. The police authorities have given instances in the past when protests that started peacefully ended in violence, resulting in deaths and incalculable destruction of properties, public and private assets. Unfortunately, youths hardly listen to such homilies being as they are in the age of idealism. It is the age they are driven by the melancholic temperament of dreaming and longing. They see the world upside down and they want to straighten it. Idealism is unquestionably right, but because of pervading bad examples all around in circles of corrupted older men in all parts of the world and decline in pursuits and perverted values of mankind today, it is driven to impure destructive ends. Sociologists and psychologists, despite their limitations have a great deal of work in their hands. The end of the demonstrations may afterwards not be achieved.

The achievement of the Labour leaders desirable as it is would turn out to be no more than Pyrrhic victory. As I did point out recently that from experiences of the aftermath of every struggle the gains turn out to be illusions. The worker comes out worse; he gets the short end of the stick. There are casualties through clever depletion engineering in human capital in companies and he is made to again go in search of elusive victories through threats of a shut-down, or by declaring yet another round of strike. Indeed, the general populace with the Pyrrhic victory is made to grapple with fresh and enervating inflationary currents.

The historic Udoji Award is 50 years old this year. It had been preceded by Simon Adebo Interim Award of 1970. Udoji award of 1974 was to reward workers for their support during the Civil War. When General Yakubu Gowon spoke about it in 2018, he said: “We decided within ourselves that it was important to reward the workers for their support and dedication during the difficult period of the war.” With what could pass for manna from Heaven, with the extra funds in their hands, workers in 1974 besieged department shops and markets and emptied the wares houses purchasing long-dreamt of goods. Nearly 10 years later, waves of inflation began to sweep through the land. Nothing can be more telling than a letter Dr. Tai Solarin, of illustrious memory and the legendary conscience of the nation, wrote to parents of Mayflower, Junior School, Ikenne. Dated 30 November, 1983, Dr. Tai Solarin wrote in a letter titled ‘Feeding Our 2,300 Children’:

“Dear Parent,
“We are frightened by the rate foodstuffs are rising madly in prices. There was an evening we had no palm oil at all to prepare supper and a man in Sagamu offered us a drum for N700.00. Of course, we did not buy it. All the same we have bought other items of food for about twice what we paid for them three months ago.

“I have travelled to Oyo and 22 miles farther north sampling yams, tomatoes, beans, and pepper. For this term we have turned some of the members of school administration to food buyers to under-cut the prices offered by our regular purchasers.

“Brown beans now go for N200 a bag.
“On November 18th, our bank overdraft stood atN46, 000, with food to buy till end of term and two months of salary to pay our staff, the figure should rise to well over N100, 000. The end of the painfully long road is yet unknown.

“If we are to keep our teachers-and they are doing well: of the 281 of our primary 6 who passed out last year, at least 130 got into Federal Government Colleges—we must pay their yearly increments. We are yet to pay these increments from last September.

“An increase in fees is inevitable and the way I see it N20.00 (Twenty Naira) a term added to each child’s boarding fees from next term will help. It is impossible for anybody to scientifically guess how much increase should be charged as the cause of our woes is, itself, unscientific.
“I have no doubt you will understand. The situation is grim.
“But we cannot close the school.
“Yours faithfully,
“Dr. Tai Solarin, Proprietor.”

Here was a proprietor who established the famous Mayflower School, not as a business but for service to the nation. How much a school primarily set up as a commercial enterprise could have been charging in the face of inflation is not beyond calculation! Where Dr. Tai Solarin spoke of thousands of Naira, we would be talking of millions today, nearly 41 years after.

The problem is not so much the minimum wage but the noise-making that is attendant to it that is the headache. There must be something to cushion wallets against the relentless gale of inflation making non-sense of earnings. After all, when inflation enters a land, its first casualty is wage earners. So dreaded is this pest on the economy that Germany learnt a long time ago, during World War 1to declare inflation as Enemy No.1. The Bundesbank today has the responsibility not to give inflation any quarters whatsoever. Seeing how inflation is sweeping through the land unrestrained, anybody with feelings, who is not closed within, is bound to be touched and would say the workers’ cause deserves sympathetic consideration, more so that they have watched how the engine of public spending has broken loose. There is thus a justifiable clamour for equitable sharing. In most parts of the developed world, pay rise is worked into the calculation of the possible rate of inflation. In this way, whatever increment a worker may receive will not be waylaid by the grocery and department stores. Similarly, organisations do yearly but quiet productivity assessment of their staff. In some there are aptitude tests.

The Federal Authority has held on to the junk of the Federally-collected revenue. And with Unified Salary since Udoji, all roads lead to Abuja. State governments predicate their budgets, not on their strength or on the sweat of their brow, but on what comes from Abuja. The Federal Government has retained this wrong notion in its eagerness to see arise even development in all parts of the country. Therefore, every simple labour issue is directed at Abuja.

Ojetunji Aboyade Committee on Revenue Allocation Committee on Revenue Allocation Formula was not persuaded by this eagerness, well meaning and high minded as the protagonists were. Aboyade did not fail to point out that, in allocation of revenue, the executive capacity of the states should be taken into account. His argument was that you cannot give millions of Naira to a man who is just learning to manage a few hundreds or thousands of Naira. He would not know what to do with it. He would squander it. The Shagari Administration that set up the committee would hear none of that.

This column made this point exactly one year ago on this same subject of minimum wage. The Aboyade Revenue Allocation Formula was thrown out of the window! Since the first false steps at making Nigeria’s many fingers equal at all costs, it has been impossible to let the government see the unwisdom in its action. The principle of each state, each council paying according to its resources is a wise and sound one, and it is one Nigerians must come to grips with, with the passage of time.

The strike that was aborted with President Bola Tinubu signing the minimum wages into law is not dissimilar to or unconnected with the national protest demonstration which began yesterday. The argument canvassed by Labour for a new minimum wage level triggered the waves of the national agitation. Who would not be awakened to the parlous state of the economy and the crushing living conditions? Who would not when rents are tearing away? Who would not when school fees are shooting beyond the roof and even garri is becoming unaffordable? Public transport fares have risen astronomically. It does not now matter if Udoji cash flood has taught this country any lesson at all. The lesson is that bigger salaries are not the answer to inflation. The answer lies in high productivity and industries re-opening and new ones being established to produce abundance of goods. These are the real sectors of the economy –agriculture and manufacturing before which we ought to spread a red carpet. As a Uganda proverb says, “To defeat hunger you have to farm.” I made the point a few weeks back that the incalculable value chain in agriculture are what can revitalise any economy and engender abundance of primary products and processed goods rolling out of factories. It is the two-pronged approach that can successfully tame inflation.

The answer ultimately lies in the knowledge of balance, the Law of Balance in the necessary exchange involving taking and giving. Government policies must take cognizance of this Law, a simple breach of which will result in manifest distortions. Take the breathing mechanism, as an example. Fill the lung gluttonly with air, but miserly decline to exhale, thus giving something back to the environment. Why do doctors set a drip for a feeble, sick person if not to restore the impaired salt balance in the disarranged balance system of the body? We enjoy electricity in our homes and in our cars but hardly figure out what is going on. Indeed, two opposite poles, the positive and the negative maintain that necessary balance between giving and taking for a healthy mechanism. One brings power, the other takes it away.

The nation is in baited breath in fear of the possible negative harvest associated with demonstration in our clime. What we all must bear in mind is that those who mobilise and those who are mobilised should endeavour to ensure that nobody comes to harm, and no assets of any kind, public or private are destroyed, which was the unacceptable feature of similar protests in the past. Much as we are free to decide and harbour thoughts, every action has consequences. We are told in the Work, In The Light Of Truth, The Grail Message: “Do not forget that every thought you produce and send out attracts all similar thoughts on its way, or attaches itself to others, thus continually increasing in strength and finally also reaching a goal, a human brain which is perhaps off its guard just for a moment, thereby offering such floating thought-forms the opportunity to penetrate and operate.

“Just consider what responsibility will fall upon you if at some time or other the thought becomes a deed through some person whom it was able to influence! The responsibility already arises through the fact that every single thought keeps a constant link with you just as if by an unbreakable thread, so as to return with the strength gained on its way, either to burden you or to bring you joy, according to the kind you produced.”