A former Minister of Labour and Productivity, Mr Emeka Wogu, in this interview with CHRISTIAN APPOLOS, talks about how the incoming government of Bola Tinubu can achieve industrial harmony in the labour sector, why the labour ministry should be treated as important and those Tinubu should appoint into his cabinet.
As a former Minister of Labour, what should the incoming government do to avoid industrial crisis in the labour sector?
The incoming president should take labour issues very seriously. I have served in many salaries and wages committees recommending salaries in the public sector and the judiciary while I was serving in the Revenue Commission. The point is not the quantum of money, the point is how much can the money purchase? So, we need to build a strong economy. A civil servant will prefer to have N10,000 as salary that can help him through a month than to have N100,000 salary that has no value.
To fix Nigeria’s economy should be uppermost in the mind of the incoming president and in the mind of his appointees. If you reform the public sector in terms of education and health, you can’t have a policeman behaving anyhow because the salary will be enough to send his children to public schools and will be enough to give him access to hospitals. But because those areas of the economy have failed totally, you find out that everyone has his or her child in private schools. How much are they paying in private schools? After that, if you want to access healthcare you go to a private hospital. In all, a man who is a director cannot afford all those luxuries, except if he is going to steal. A permanent secretary or a minister cannot afford those things, except the man is a thief, because the least private school in Abuja will not be less than N250,000 per term. So, how can a public servant afford it? In a public school, you might afford it with N5,000, or N10,000. We all went to public schools. A boy had an appendix operation and a private hospital charged him N700,000. But I remember in 1977 when I was in secondary school, I don’t think my appendix operation cost my parents more than N5,000 in a public hospital. The house we lived in the GRA, my father paid only N20, had access to a brand new car and everything and had no reason to take bribes.
People say that the leadership of NLC will be aggressive. What approach should the incoming government use in its dealings with the labour union to avoid industrial crisis?
Dialogue. The new administration should reach out to them because there is this doctrine of tripartism in labour. They are partners in the project of a better Nigeria – the employers, the employees and the government.
So it is better to ‘jaw jaw than to war war.’ At times, there are labour agitations that are unnecessary. You don’t engage people and you go to switch off the national grid, you don’t engage government and you go to shutdown the oil wells and all that. During my tenure, I made sure that NUPENG and PENGASSAN didn’t have reason to shut the oil well because it takes a lot of money and time to restart a short down oil well. And those things are the main sources of revenue for this country.
When you look at it, it is like Nigerian Police going on strike; it is unheard of. There was a time the national grid was shut down when the current NLC President was the General Secretary. It was during my time and it took me almost 26 hours to resolve it. On switching back, the losses were quite huge. So, power is critical, the oil sector is critical. In fact, health and education are even more critical. These are places we should not allow strike to happen. If the previous reports set up by previous administration, particularly during the Jonathan administration in the heath sector and education are being implemented, there won’t be problem of strikes in these sectors.
I believe that in as much as people dread Comrade Joe Ajaero, it might be a misplaced dread or fear. I have worked with him. If you engage him, he is quite reasonable. He is a man who comes with a lot of facts; he comes in strongly on position of principle, so, needs to be engaged. There should be honesty on the part of government and on the part of trade unions.
How important is implementation of agreement in the relationship between the trade unions and the government?
When there is an agreement, I believe in the sanctity of agreement. It needs to be implemented. Let me give you an example. The agreement entered into in 2009 between government and ASUU still remains a bidding agreement. We now had to re-engage the labour unions and ASUU and we got another modified agreement, which if it had been implemented from 2013, by now everything would have been sorted out in the university sector. But unfortunately, this current administration didn’t do much towards that. So, if they had continued from where the last administration stopped in terms of re-bargaining of the 2009 agreement, would have been done with that sector.
What is your take on fuel subsidy removal, Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) and incoming president’s cabinet appointments?
Once there is a political will, there is nothing you cannot achieve. If a minister has the support of his president, the issues of fuel subsidy and implementation of the plan can be done. There is no big deal. I was able to achieve a lot as the Minister of Labour and Productivity because my president had confidence in me and I had access to him. Not to be boastful, if I am made Minister of Petroleum today, I will clean up that sector. With my background in oil and gas at the revenue mobilisation and allocation of physical commission, we can get it. Do you know how much we spend in oil subsidy payments? Those can give us huge refineries or modular ones or even to re-fix the existing refineries. The issue is that the system is messed up.
On appointment style of the outgoing government, you can’t have a minister serve eight years. I have never seen it done; right from Obasanjo, Yar’dua and Jonathan. You get fatigued. It is best to re-jig. But we have ministers who have been in one position for eight years. So, some form of re-jigging is what we have missed in this last administration.
And then I would advise the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, not to populate his Federal Executive Council with former governors. It is a big issue. A governor who has been a chief executive of a state and you bring him back; he will see him from the lens of a governor. The president is a former governor, my former colleague, and the vice president is former governor. He should go out and look for a mixture of experienced people, technocrats, and very young people and give them a timeline. Because if you watch this outgoing Federal Executive Council, there are about eight former governors in the cabinet; it was too heavy. So, I don’t think the incoming president should make that mistake.
Which areas of Nigeria’s economy should the incoming government focus its attention?
Over the past decades as a sovereign nation, we have being a mono-product economy but there appears to be an active process of diversification of the mono-product economy. We are now earning more money from non-oil sector. Before it used to be oil, but now, every month, oil contributes almost zero into the federation account. The reasons for that are various. One, we have had very corrupt subsidy regime in the oil sector, our refineries are down and our domestic crude is sold at a dollar-denominated price and brought back to us as finished product.
Why would a country that is a major oil producer recognised by OPEC be importing fuel after almost 100 years of crude oil exploration? It is shameful. So, that is an area where I would advised the president-elect to look at and make sure that both government owned refineries or new ones are built and that privately owned refineries should be encouraged.
The data coming out from the oil sector are quite disheartening. From my hindsight of experience as a Federal Commissioner in the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission, I am sad that we almost lost that sector. However, I will tell you that we have a better prospect outside oil. The new frontier is gas and Nigeria has a lot of gas. Then other minerals like gold, and so many others are found in almost all the 36 states of the federation including FCT.
So, what I will advise the incoming government to do is to diversify our sources of revenue. It doesn’t really need to be on tax or royalties and loans because it is not good to over tax citizens. So, it is a herculean task for the incoming administration because we have gone down with a N77trillion debt. It is quite huge. When you compare the GDP against our borrowing, you find out that it is humongous. We have come to a situation whereby we borrow before we can pay salaries; it is a thing of concern.
In addition, he must have a robust economic team, he must hire the best hands for the Ministry of Finance, Budget and Planning, Governor of the Central Bank and of course, the Ministry of Labour and Productivity. It is quite central and strategic to the national economy because a strike that is prolonged can bring down the economy. In other countries, it is a key ministry. After the Ministry of Budget and Planning, the next is Labour, because Labour is central to the economy of every nation. The workers are the people who get this revenue for the government. That should be his focus.
Also, he should focus on total reform of the oil subsidy regime. It might be painful to both the Nigerian workers and all that but if we are going to remove subsidy on petrol, we should return the subsidy on diesel and kerosene and have a robust bus transportation system like the El-Rufai regime in FCT did. Those big buses run on diesel, which means civil servants can have easy access to transportation. The train from Abuja to Kaduna also runs on diesel. The one that will impact on the common masses of Nigeria and the civil servants is diesel and kerosene, not petrol. How can you be subsidising big men who have about 10 cars in the house?
What is your take on the 2023 election, especially the presidential election?
The 2023 elections have come and gone. After the presidential election and that of National Assembly, we had gubernatorial elections and elections into the various state houses of assembly. All those who were declared winners of those elections have collected their Certificate of Return. So, in my own estimation, the process of electing new leaders at all levels is completed, kudos to INEC.
I see it as an assignment that has been completed irrespective of some people coming up with an idea that it was not a free and fair election, that it was not a perfect election and all that. I don’t think there is perfection in election as far as it is being handled by human beings. I have never seen any democratic setting where election is 100 percent perfect. We have seen elections in the United States of America where allegations of electoral fraud in the state of Florida. During President Bush and Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida was alleged of committing electoral fraud.
You said there is no perfection in elections, how will you rate the 2023 election?
This election of 2023 is different from 2019 and it is quite different from 2015. From 1999, there has been metamorphosis in the process of election. For the just concluded 2023 elections, INEC has done its constitutional duty and the process culminated into the announcement of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the president-elect and Senator Kashim Shettima as the vice president-elect. There are so many people who participated in the election and what you cannot deny any participant in any electoral contest is his or her right to contest results in any established court of law. That is the next stage.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
