Protocols;
On behalf of my colleagues in the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), I wish to thank Your Excellency immensely for granting us this audience with you, other principal officers and ranking members of the Senate. We recognize that this is a particularly trying times for the leadership of the Senate, therefore receiving us at this time is a measure of your perception of Nigerian workers as useful allies of the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
We had earlier written to congratulate you on your emergence as Senate President soon after your election. In our letter, we specifically stated that we were looking forward to having an audience with you, so that we could raise issues Nigerian workers believe aregermane to the consolidation of our democracy.
Having granted us the audience, we intend to use it and speak frankly and bluntly about issues we,as workers and as Nigerians, feel strongly concerned about. These issues range from those that are specific to the legislature at both the national and state levels, and generally about the health of the entire polity.
Your Excellency, Nigerians are looking forward to your leadership of the Senate to impact positively on their lives. As organized labour, we similarly hope that with your experience from the state, and the seamless way you led the Nigerian Governors’ Forum when you were chairman, you will give quality leadership to the Senate. We recall that as chairman of the Governors’ Forum, your intervention helped to resolve the protracted teachers strike over their negotiated 27.5% teaching allowance. Similarly, not long ago, we had cause to condemn the “passing of 47 bills in 10 minutes”, by the 7th Senate on the twilight of its lifespan. We note that though you were a member of the 7th Senate, you were one of the few who felt honour-bound to publicly distance yourself from that regrettable incidence.
Therein lies the source of our hope that the 8th Senate under your watch will be less opaque, less secretive, and will witness more transparency, more responsiveness to the yearnings and aspirations of the Nigerian people.
(ii) Partnership with National Assembly:
As your Excellency is aware, our leadership of Nigerian workers is still in its early days. Infact, our election held in the same month of March this year as the Presidential and National Assembly elections. Our leadership is ready to partner with the 8th National Assembly in general and the 8th Senate in particular, so that together, we will work to transform our country from a country that is perpetually tall on ‘potentials’ to a truly great nation with solid democratic foundation,sound democratic principles and dependable public institutions.
One of the promises we made to Nigerian workers upon which we were elected is that we will revamp our parliamentary interactions at both the national and state levels. From the time Senator Anyim Pius Anyim was Senate President, the NLC had asked for, and waspromised an office space in the National Assembly for our Parliamentary Liaison Office to operate from. Regrettably till this moment, the various leadership of the National Assembly since then failed to fulfill this request, which we gathered was granted. Despite new structures been added to the National Assembly complex, we havebeen unlucky, so to say, because we are aware that a number of such requests, including of businesses, have been given sometimes express approval over the years.
Your Excellency, we wish to represent this request once again.We want to emphasise that having a liaison office within the National Assembly will give us enhanced accessibilityto do proper legislative advocacy. You may recall that your predecessor in office, Senator David Mark, sometimes ago complained that the State Houses of Assembly were glorified rubber stamps to state governors. Our plan is to use our National Assembly Liaison Office to train liaison officers for the state level legislature to also provide for a robust engagement with the lawmaking process at that level.
Our aim in having the Parliamentary Liaison Office, which has since been in place at the level of the NLC National Secretariat,is to partner with the National Assembly and to have enough staff employed to enable us engage the legislative processes meaningfully and to add value to it. This has been a productive practice in South Africa where our counterpart, COSATU, has a parliamentary office in Pretoria, in Ghana where the Ghana-TUC has parliamentary officers and in the USA where the AFL-CO has a team of parliamentary officers working with Congress.
(ii) Democratic Consolidation and Dividends Of Democracy
For us in organized labour, particularly in the Nigeria Labour Congress; the fate of our democracy is tied to how far we are able to address the mass poverty of our people. In other words, how far we are able to consolidate our democracy is tied to how welland coordinated dividends of democracy trickle down to the masses of our people; and most significantly, how we have been able to free our people from the bondage of poverty.
In the last fiveyears or so, corruption has become much more offensive in our body politics and it literally brought our nation on its knees. For the first time since that infamous period of the twilight of the 2nd Republic in 1983, three decades down the line, our country is back to the cycle – where a number of state governments have defaulted in paying workers salaries for several months, and needed Federal intervention to be able to do so. Only last week, in the United State, during his state visit, President Buhari disclosed that in the last decade alone, over $150 billion of our common wealth was stolen by public officers and stashed away in foreign banks.
Amidst these developments, the feeling and perception of Nigerians is that our anti-corruption laws are either overwhelmed or do not have the requisite edge to respond to the renewed assault on our collective conscience by those taking advantage of their position to steal and loot our commonwealth, without any qualms.
Corruption cases being handled by our anti-corruption agencies are taking too long –some having gone on for as long as 7 to 9 years – are often thrown out not for lack of merit or points of law but on mere technicalities. For Nigerians to regain confidence in our anti-corruption agencies and the judicial process, high profile corruption cases need to be more diligently and competently handled and dispensed with more quickly and timely at the level of the courts.
Your Excellency, the NLC believes that the National Assembly has a key role to play in ensuring that justice is not onlydone but truly seen to be done. One of the most credible ways of doing this is by strengthening the existing anti-corruption laws so that people who steal our collective wealth can be brought to justice far much quicker than we presently have. Corruption will reduce once people know that there is no hiding place for those who perpetuate it, and that corrupt enrichment will not necessarilybe able to buy them freedom from the long arm of the law. Conviction of perpetrators of corrupt practices is how corruption is being tackled in other climes, where they have fought it, and brought it to a standstill.
(iii) High Cost of Governance.
Your Excellency, another area in our democratic practice that we have serious cause to worry about is the high cost of governance across board – from local, state and federal levels. Some fifteen years or so ago when the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), fixed salaries of councilors at N150,000 per month, then more than the salary of a university professor, many well-meaning Nigerians kicked against the unreasonableness of such a remuneration package.
Information available to us indicate that as far back as 2009, the RMAFC put the salaries and Allowances of “Certain Political, Public and Judicial Office holdersnumbering 17,474 at N1.126 trillion annually. Thisindicates that the earnings of political office holders were such a big drain on the revenue of the countryand were clearly unsustainable. The level of financial expenditure were such that a Senator and a Representative earn more than 100 times what a graduate on grade level 8, step 15 earns annually. The ratio, when compared to what a level 17, step 9 officer in the federal civil service earns annually, was more than 20 times.
Your Excellency, you need not to be told that we are again back to poor revenue from our main source of foreign exchange –crude oil. This, combined with the excesses of our political elite in the mismanagement of our national resources, has once again called to question the issue of the high cost of governance in the country.
In response to this, some state governors have reduced their salaries by 50%, and the President and Vice President recently joined by ordering that their salaries should also be reduced by 50%. The National Assembly has also acted by reducing its annual budget from N150 billion to N115 billion as symbolic gesture that our legislators are in tune with our austere times.
Your Excellency,Nigerians generally do not believe that these gesturesfrom the two arms of government are far reaching enough to address the question of high cost of governance in the land.
For the President, the Vice President and the governors, the point had been rightly made that they do not depend on their salaries and allowances for their upkeep anyway, as the state provides for them 100%, therefore even if they part with 95% of their entitlements, it will not affect them in any material way. Secondly, as the Governor of Ebonyi State recently argued, the salaries of key government officers are not necessarily the only source of the wastage and high cost of governance in the country.
For the legislature, Your Excellency, Nigerians are concerned and wants explanations on how the National Assembly budget, which in 2003 was N23.347 billion, rose to N66.488 billion in 2007, and then climbed to N104.825 billion in 2008. In 2010, Your Excellency, under the watch of your predecessor, the budget of the National Assembly reached an all time record jump to N154.2 billion.
To compound the problem of comprehension, your predecessor, obviously working with your colleagues in the red and green chambers, wrapped your earnings and expenditure in utmost secrecy, and by 2011, the details of the National Assembly budget were no longer accessible having used your legislative powers to move it into a first-linecharge on the federation account, like the judiciary, INEC, UBE, and the NDDC.In 2007, National Assembly’s budget for instance, had 8 sub-heads under recurrent, and another 8 sub-heads under capital, which were N59.806 billion and N6.594 billion respectively. By 2011, all thatappeared under the National Assembly budget was N150 billion without any breakdown or details.
Your Excellency, our principal concern is to have in the National Assembly anopen, transparentand accountable budgetbased on the expenditure items of the legislative arm of government. In calling for transparency and accountability, it is also our belief that those who seek to diminish the significanceof this concern by saying that the budget represents a small fraction of the national budget, misses an important point in the accountability principle. For the purposes of comparing standards, Your Excellency may recall that some years back, some members of the British House of Commons, from the Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties, lost their seats on account of fiddling with their constituency expenses.
Your predecessor,Senator Mark, in both his responses to NuhuRibadu’s call for opening up of the earnings of the National Assembly during the PDP Senators retreat in Port Harcourt, and a recent Premium Times investigative story on the secrecy of the National Assembly budget under hisleadership, failed to address the core issue raised: i.e. the absence of openness, the absence of transparency in the budget process, which became consolidated when he took over leadership of the Senate in 2007.
Our hope is that the 8th National Assembly under your leadership will take deliberate steps to come clean with Nigerians, and put to rest all the controversy around the earnings of the members of Senate and the House of Representatives.
(iv) Deregulation of the Petroleum Downstream and Subsidy Removal
Your Excellency, we recall that in 2009, our Committee on Deregulation of the Downstream Sector of the Petroleum Industry, headed by our Deputy President, Comrade Peters Adeyemi, (who is here today as a member of our delegation) met you as Chairman of the Governors Forum, at Transcorp Hilton Hotel. You were accompanied to that meeting by Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State. Our Committee held useful discussions with you and your views were reflected in the publication entitled; “Nigeria Labour Congress Report of the Committee on Deregulation (2009)”
We have also kept tab of your contributions in the chambers of the Senate which helped to expose the fraud around fuel subsidy in 2011–2012. Since the last general elections, and the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari; we have noticed a renewed, orchestrated and well-oiled campaign for the removal of fuel subsidy, which is otherwise dressed in the toga of deregulation of the downstream of the petroleum sector.
We have resisted joining the debate in this rehashed campaign because we belief that the new President knows far more than many of those advising him to remove fuel subsidy, haven served as Petroleum Minister himself, and was involved in the establishment of two of our four refineries. His comments on the issue also show that he is not likely to be easily hoodwinked into taking any rash and undigested decision on this.
Your Excellency, since the top level dialogue we had during the tenure of President Yar’Adua in 2009, which led to the production of the Report I referred to earlier, not much had happened to address the concerns of organized Labour. Instead, there has been systematic degeneration and increased fraud in the sector.
What also baffles us at the NLC is that some otherwise intelligent people are now arguing that on account of the inherent fraud and corruption in the subsidy regime and the oil industry as a whole, Nigerians should be made to suffer on account of the activities of these fraudsters by removing the subsidy. This is hardly rational.
For us, those trying to take advantage of the subsidy situation, and have committed fraudulent acts, should be tracked down, caught and made to face the full punishment for their nefarious activities. Our main point that Nigeria cannot, as an oil producing country, continue to be dependent on importation of petroleum products for our internal consumption remains unassailable. The one sustainable way for us in the NLC as we articulated in the Deregulation Report is that we must make our four refineries to work at full capacity, and build new ones to take care of the shortfall, which the current refineries working at full capacity, are unable to meet.
With the recent devaluation of the naira by the CBN, as long as we continue on the route of petroleum importation, ordinary Nigerians cannot afford to bear the cost of this products locally as the more the value of our currency depreciates, the costlier the imported products would be.
It is our hope that the Senate under your leadership would side with the Nigerian people in the event that those pushing for increasing the hardship on Nigerians get a hearing of the executive arm. For us in the NLC, we will always be on the side of the people; in opposing any such move.
(v) Crisis of Unemployment
Your Excellency, you will agree with us that the crisis of unemployment in the country is a reflection of the scale of the economic decay. As we had stated during this year’s May Day, there is hardly any household in this country where there isn’t at least one long time unemployed graduate. Some estimates put youth unemployment at over 50 million. The National Assembly under your leadership need to play a role in ensuring that the required legislations are put in place to provide the enabling environment for job creation in both the public and private sectors of our economy.
(vi) Devaluation and New National Minimum Wage
The last Minimum Wage Act was promulgated by the National Assembly in 2011. As we also indicated in this year’s May Day address, the five-year circle, during which the National Minimum Wage is due for review, is here. In addition, the devaluation of the naira from N150 to $1, to about N242 to $1, today underscores the grim situation for salary earners in the country against the fact that our economy is import-driven. The devaluation, in simple economic terms, means that the purchasing power of the ordinary Nigerian wage earner is grossly devalued.
As a result of this grim economic reality, Your Excellency, Congress will soon submit a New Minimum Wage demand, which we hope will be negotiated by the traditional tripartite negotiating team of Government, Employers and Organized Labour. Our hope is that when the end product of the negotiation is brought before the National Assembly for legislation, it would be treated with dispatch.
(vii) National Assembly Leadership Crisis
We cannot complete this address without appealing to Your Excellency and your colleagues in the ruling party to do everything to quickly resolve your internal crisis, so that real normalcy can return to the National Assembly. As you very well know, Nigerians who performed the historic act of voting your party into power at both the Executive and Legislative arms expect you to deliver on your promise “change”, which Nigerians expect must be positive. They do not wish to be repaid with unending intra-party crisis at the legislative arm of government, which will obviously delay activities of government at the executive arm.
Having said what I have just said, I’m conscious of the fact that I could be asked: “what about first putting your own house in order?” I’m aware that there is a perception out there that the NLC is divided as a result of the actions of a few of our colleagues who stood for elections, were defeated in an open and well-monitored contest, but unfortunately refused to accept the outcome of a democratic contest.
I wish to assure Your Excellency that we too are doing everything to put our house in order and overcome this unfortunate stage of our institutional progress and development.
Once again, Your Excellency, thank you for granting us this audience, and listening attentively to our message.
