In this interview with CHRISTIAN APPOLOS, the National President of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), Comrade Makolo Hassan, spoke about the ongoing debate on the 2024 Tax Reform Bill, and his members’ verdict on the year 2024.
As the national president of NASU, a union of a large number of Nigerian workers, what is your overview of the year 2024?
As the National President of NASU, a member of the Central Working Committee (CWC) and National Executive Council (NEC) of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), I can categorically say that the year 2024 was very terrible and horrible to the teeming members of NASU and Nigerian workers at large.
Year 2024 has been so hectic for workers, the period is such that we don’t pray for a repeat. As breadwinners in our various homes, it has been so difficult. Before the enactment of the Minimum Wage Act 2024, we were still buying rice at around 70,000. And we were saying, if you are giving us 70,000 at least it will go for one bag of rice. But as of today, it is a different ball game altogether. The 70,000 naira minimum wage can no longer buy one bag of rice. With an average family, you are automatically running at a deficit; from filling of gas to food items and fueling of your car, I mean basic things a household must survive on. So from any angle you look at it, it’s very difficult.
So if by virtue of my level as a senior worker, I am taking above 70,000, how about people who are taking just 70,000. It means they are living below the poverty line, and only by the grace of the almighty God they are surviving. 2024 is a year the government ruined the lives of many Nigerians with its policies. Very unfortunate.
NLC president at the kickoff of this year’s Harmattan school said that 2024 is a harrowing and worst year for Nigerian workers. Your thought seems to align with his.
Absolutely yes. The genesis of the problem we are in now started from that very day President Tinubu, made the pronouncement “fuel subsidy gone”. That statement brought economic hardship in a different twist. From that moment to now, things have not been the same. Before that pronouncement, even dollar was a little bit friendly. But as we speak today, Nigerian workers do not take home up to $50 in a month. Outside Nigeria, that $50 is something you can use to feed in a day. It cannot even give you a three square meal depending on the part of the country you have gone to. We expected him to do better.
Indeed, 2024 is so terrible to Nigerian workers and its leadership because apart from the accumulated hardship caused by subsidy removal, the government started a new trend of harassing workers. Apart from the harassment of the NLC president, NASU and SSANU members were harassed. The joint committee of NASU and SSANU, we were going on a protest. As law-abiding citizens and labour leaders, we went to the Commissioner of Police here in Abuja just to tell him we need police cover because we want to do a peaceful protest. I was with the man from 12 o’clock till about 9 pm waiting for his approval. We also went to the DSS, and they told us, since we have come, it means we don’t mean violence. So they were with us. But on that day while we were at the Abuja Unity Fountain, the Commissioner police came with armor tanks and other automatic weapons as if he was going to fight a war. When we have enough war to fight in the bush, the kidnappers are everywhere. He didn’t allow us to go on with our protest. He didn’t go to the bushes to arrest kidnappers but he came with armour tanks to harass innocent workers who were taking action with their legal rights.
That is the year 2024 we find ourselves in Nigeria. Unfortunately, government policies that rather better our lives, increased hardship. But like our slogan states: aluta continua, so there is no end to this struggle. As we are solving one problem, another one is surfacing.
There was a corroborating statement by NLC and TUC that President Tinubu had promised not to increase fuel pump price if workers accept a 70,000 minimum wage, and the money saved from subsidy will be used to ease hardship on the citizens. Fast forward to today, fuel pump price is over 1,000 and hardship is exacerbating, what is your judgment of all of these?
Let us hammer again on the minimum wage. In every sane society, when you enact a new minimum wage, what follows it is what we call consequential adjustment. This adjustment is the instrument that determines what workers in different levels will get. It could be 30%, 20%, 10% or even 5%. But in the case of the current minimum wage, it is just an award. A committee worked on the consequential adjustment, and we saw the table and thought it will be implemented by the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission (NSIWC), because the table emanated from them. But till today, what we are taking is 40,000 across board. We took the 40,000 across board and no one has told us the parameters that have been used for that. The minimum wage was negotiated for, and so it ought to have followed the consequential adjustment.
Be that as it may, the problem we have with the incessant fuel price increase is that at every time you increase the pump price of fuel the market prices of things go up. So it would have been better if we started with that 1000, the price of things would have gone up once. But when it started from 600 and jumped to 800 and to 1000 plus, that is also how the market forces are increasing prices of goods and services. This has left one wondering if the people governing us are oblivion of the enormity of the resultant effects of their policies, that they are inflicting and increase the level of pain and hardship the citizens are going through. It is horrible.
A worker who has no other thing else to do to earn money, how do you expect such a worker to eschew corruption? If a worker comes to the office under 70,000 and has nothing to eat at all, he doesn’t even know how to transport myself home. And somebody comes and says, take 20,000, that can automatically lead you to do what ordinary you have never thought of doing. If we want to really fight corruption, we must improve the lives of workers in this country, we must work on our economy so that we can meet up with the demands of daily survival, not the kind of economic situation that we find ourselves in now. No worker will survive it at all.
As a senior staff in the tertiary institution, if I devote my salary to fuel my car, it will not be able to take me to the office for one month. People pack their cars now and go by public transport. Is that what we are praying for? No, it’s been horrible here for workers.
Are you saying that the meager salaries many workers receive have a link to corruption, especially in the public service sector?
It does. Let’s use a uniform man as an example, I don’t want to link it to a particular uniform. A uniform man who is taking 70,000 is standing on the road. He knows he has nothing to eat when he gets back home. Then he stops a car of someone who has committed an offence. Then he said let’s go to a station or whatever. And the person says, I’m in a hurry, take 5000. instead of rebuking you, he will give you a salute and say go. This is because there is nothing back home for him and his family to eat. And apparently the government does not care about how he fares, the consequences of their bad policies and the ripple effects on the ordinary citizens and everything that makes society decent.
But if you are working in a place where you are well paid, and you know this money can satisfy you and your family, you can tell that man to hell with you. But you know, some people can go to any length to protect their integrity. If you are well paid, you guide against that job jealousy, and it will reduce corruption.
People say politicians are corrupt. But they cannot carry out any act of corruption without involving the public servant. But in a case where the public servants are well catered for, it will drastically reduce the level of corruption. When you say, do this, they will tell you, we are not doing it. Somebody may have the fear of God, but the situation on the ground, the situation he finds himself in, he’s not able to pay school fees and the children are at home, that person will fall into that temptation.
So if we must fight corruption, workers must be adequately catered for. During a recent investigation, there was one case where a young person will be in Niger State and withdraw, the same day he will be in Kaduna, meaning he was working with some higher individuals. So if workers are adequately catered for, one leg of corruption would have been erased, because this young man will report to the appropriate authorities.
In Nigeria, we are used to the government making promises but eventually do otherwise. Do you think it is so because they cannot actually better the lives of the citizens or they don’t just know how to do it?
I don’t think the case is because the government does not have the capacity or doesn’t want to better the lives of the citizens, I guess the problem is their approach. Instances have shown that they usually take uncoordinated or less articulated policy action, doing what is supposed to be done last first, and what is supposed to be done first last.
Although this is not the first government that will promise a thing, and eventually do otherwise, this government seems to be the worst. This government has promised so much to Nigerians, but has failed to live up to its promises.
What are the expectations of NASU and its teeming members from the President Tinubu-led government in the year 2025?
In principle we are almost in 2025 because it is just days away. If any good thing is going to happen tomorrow, you begin to sense it from now. So I’m not too sure that the government is going to do anything different from what we are seeing now. But our expectations and our belief and what we urge the government, is to do everything possible to stabilize our currency.
If we are able to stabilize the naira, to some extent, then we know we are heading somewhere better. With the 70,000 minimum wage we are talking about now, if we are able to stabilize our currency and we are able to guide against the fuel increase, maybe with the projection we are having, if the price begins to come down, then probably the price of things might slightly draw. And when that happens, the money at hand will become a little bit valuable. But if we trade the same part we are trading now, it means there will be nothing different.
Then again, I want to add to Nigerians, apart from the government, we have a role to play for everybody in the country to enjoy because we are not good to ourselves. What we do sometimes is horrible. Once they say this fuel has gone up, the marketer forces will put their heads together to the exploitation of the poor masses. So the government should help us by doing the needful, by stabilizing our currency, by working on the economy of the country, and by making sure that the fuel price stays at a spot.
In a nutshell, we want to urge President Tinubu to try his best to ensure that 2025 will not be worse than 2024.
On the current issue of tax reform as it concerns workers you lead, what is your take?
As a representative of a large number of workers. I always say that the people that pay tax in this country, effectively, are the workers. Before you take your pay, tax has been taken. Some workers are paying tax of 50,000 per month, 100,000 per month. You can imagine a worker whose salary is about 400,000 the government takes 50,000 from it as tax, and someone whose pay is 300 plus you take 50,000 as tax. What we have is not even enough, yet you are taking from us again.
If you begin to tax everything after you have taxed our salaries, taxing the little that is remaining again, how do you want us to survive? If we want to copy some advanced country’s policy, let it be something that will benefit Nigerians not one that will take more from us. We are not there yet, because they will tell you, even the TV in your room, everything you pay tax. Truth is that the government will end up unleashing horry and high levels of crime and criminality in our society.
Thank God that many Nigerians have risen against this said tax reform. In this country of God, you may tend to support some things when they give you the analysis, but in practice, it might not be what you thought it would be. They will tell you that the tax reform will do this and that, but will it happen that way?
Once it becomes a law, then you will now see the real, true color of the policy. This is because our government has always been known to do things with hidden agenda. If in this said tax reform policy, the small-scale businesses and workers would be exempted, it is then welcomed. Because we believe that workers are already giving so much to the government in the name of the tax.
So this tax reform is not in the best interest of workers. You see, like in everything the government does in Nigeria, there is a difference between pronouncement and practice. Now we have a country where the voice of workers does not count. What is the guarantee that this policy will not push all of us beyond the poverty line and finish us totally? When this policy is passed into law and we say we are going on strike, the populace will say labour has started again.
So right now, we are saying it is better for the government to come up with policies that will alleviate the current suffering of workers and Nigerians at large.
If small-scale businesses will not be taxed, it means some workers tomorrow can go into business they will not be taxed and that will be a win-win situation for the citizens and country. This is absolutely the wrong time for this policy because going by the previous policies of this government and their resultant effects, this particular tax reform will still turn around to hunt workers, and it is not acceptable to us.
Some argued that the government should rather ensure that the bigger companies pay appropriate tax. However, if this tax policy must come to be, what must the government do to gain the confidence of the citizens on it?
Most corporations, bigger ones, are not paying tax appropriately. And unfortunately, this is so because they have government backing. Otherwise, how dare they not pay the appropriate tax and still stay in the country, doing business?
When I started, I said people who pay accurate tax in this country are the workers. So if the government is sincere and really wants to tax appropriately, this reform should then be based on ensuring that bigger corporations pay the right tax. Let the direction of this tax reform dwell on that. In addition to that, the smaller scale business enterprises should be relieved. If this is the direction of this reform, workers will embrace it and even help to fight for its implementation. Already, workers are campaigning and fighting against tax evasion, tax exemptions and illicit financial flow from Nigeria and other African countries to the developed West.
So if the government is serious about this tax reform policy and really wants it to improve both the living condition and economic growth of Nigeria, the direction of this policy must be reviewed to exempt small-scale businesses and many goods and services. Government must directly want the Small Business scale to flourish, and put its hammer on it, and ensure that those who have been evading the payment of tax before, especially ABC companies, pay correctly.
Considering the current economic realities: struggling businesses, hardship and inflation, do you think this tax reform will really help the government to boost and achieve a booming economy for Nigeria?
Sometimes I ask myself; all the taxes. other incomes and revenues from different sources, what is the money actually doing for us in this country? Is it our road networks that are going from bad to worse? Is it the hospital that is still equipped with the low potency drugs and what have you. That was why I earlier said that we cannot copy most things we see in advanced countries, especially one such as this tax reform. The President and his team must copy things that will rather lift the citizens and by extension the country up. In reality, this is not the right time for this tax reform, because things are actually too tough for us. What is expected of our government now is to see how to ameliorate the current hardship.
Government should rather look for a sustainable way to return the fuel pump price to 200 or 300 naira per liter. We are looking at seeing Naira exchange to dollars for 200, 300, 400 or even 500. This tax policy will never get us anywhere near achieving any of these.
I’ve travelled to other countries many times and I find out that things you buy at $5 are still the same years after. But the reverse is the case here in our country yet our government wakes up every now and then introducing hardship and poverty-driven policies. $50 used to be around N30,000 to N40,000 but now it is about N80,000. These are things we ought to see how we can fight before we begin to put hands here and there.
Maybe the aim of the reform might not be because they want to help the populace but how to get more money. But if the government actually thought that this is the best way for it to raise more money, it is from the dying poor masses and businesses. However you looked at it, the poor Nigerian workers and masses will equally be highly affected.
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