May day or Mayday!

BY OMOLE IBUKUN

May Day means International Workers’ Day which grew out of the 19th-century labour movement for worker’s rights and an eight-hour workday. Mayday is a distress call that is used to signal a life-threatening emergency, usually on a ship or a plane, although it may be used in a variety of other situations.

As May 1, 2022, draws closer, more reasons have presented themselves on why this May Day should not be a traditional May Day celebration by the Nigerian working people. In fact, there is nothing to celebrate. The eight-hour workday won in the 19th century that Labour Day is supposed to celebrate, is no longer available for most Nigerian workers who are very overworked and very underpaid. That’s for those who even have jobs at all. As at 2021, 33.3% or 23.2 million people of the about 70 million people who should be working in Nigeria are out of work.

Most workers in casual jobs now have to work for more than half of their day just to keep their jobs, or else they can be fired immediately by their bosses. Casualisation is a term used in Nigeria to describe work arrangements that are characterised by poor working conditions like job insecurity, low wages, and lack the normal employment benefits that accrue to regular employees as well as the right to unionise, organise and collectively bargain and this is already the order of the day in Nigeria. According to the Nigeria Labour Congress, 50% of this casualisation exists in the most lucrative sectors of the economy, namely in the downstream oil and gas, and banking sectors. According to the banking union, 80% of bank workers are casual staff. It was reported in December 2021 that “the number of casuals has reached an average of 67% going by reported figures of between 45 to 90% of workers in the manufacturing, banking, insurance, steel, mining, media, oil and gas, among others”. These figures defeat the essence of the May Day celebration of the eight-hour workday because one of the major features of casualisation is longer working hours.

I can’t remember the first May Day event I attended but I can remember the most significant May Day event I attended. It was that May Day event that captured the significance of what a workers’ day should look like, and it only meant something for those who experienced it because it went beyond a celebration. Back in 2018, I met with some student comrades from Ondo town to intervene with our political materials at the state’s May Day event in Akure. As usual, labour leaders brought the governor to speak to the workers even though the governor had not paid some wages and allowances. During the governor’s speech at the May Day event, shouts of No! No! were heard all over the place from workers protesting the non-payment of their wages. Rather than pacify the crowd, the governor went on the offensive and a protest started gathering. Security operatives had to smuggle the governor out of the venue in commando style. This is one May Day that was marked well by the workers of Ondo state.

May Day should be a day to fight for better working conditions, not to celebrate a victory that practically does not yet exist in our part of the world. It should be to fight for our own victory. Not a day for union leaders to wear ‘to-match’ and march before governors and a president overseeing the poor working conditions of workers, and the suffering of the working people generally. The fuel price increment that the labour leaders promised to resist has been executed by the government through the backdoor. Electricity tariff increment that the labour leaders promised to organise against, on behalf of their members, have been executed too without any resistance from labour. All promises cancelled by the labour leadership! This is the common denominator between the labour leadership and the ruling APC.

In fact, the APC government is so sure of the loyalty of the labour leadership so much that the minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige had the confidence to openly ask the NLC leadership to go and warn striking university lecturers, ASUU, on behalf of the government, to call off their strike. In his words “So, I’m using this opportunity to plead with the NLC, to which ASUU is affiliated, to call them to order, make them obey the law”. This is why the same government that said it had postponed fuel subsidy removal for 18 months in January had the confidence to say two weeks ago that they were still in ongoing negotiations with labour leadership over fuel subsidy removal. I thought that case was closed for the next 18 months at least!

As if this is not enough, the crises of poverty and insecurity are biting harder, and not just on the working poor. Even the lower middle class who could once afford domestic flights now have to pay double flight costs because of the increase in the price of jet fuel or face the peril of Nigerian roads (and recently, railways).

Who would ever have thought that someone of the calibre of late Comrade Musa-Lawal Ozigi (mni), who was the secretary-general of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and was once the general secretary of the Senior Staff Union of Civil Engineers and Construction Workers, would be the victim of an unfortunate train attack by bandits between Abuja and Kaduna? Who would have thought someone of the calibre of Comrade Akin Akinsola, the TUC chairman of Kwara state, would be a victim of insecurity on the Nigerian railway? May their militant and courageous souls rest in perfect peace.

The loss of lives and properties due to attacks by bandits has multiplied in just the last week. Who would have thought that bandits would rob and raid from house to house in the Pipeline area in Kubwa without any intervention from the police? Who would have thought that people living in the Giri-Gwagwalada-Kuje-Kwali area of the capital city would have to resort to protests over constant kidnappings and killings in the area which have not been addressed by the government?

No one is safe anymore! No matter your class or status! One of the selfish reasons I moved down to Abuja from the south-west was because I saw a country crashing and I felt that I will be safest at the capital because the capital always falls last whenever a country fails, according to history. But now, nowhere is safe anymore! Even the capital is falling! Even the capital is encircled and those of us, working people, who can only afford to live on the outskirts of the capital are just the first and direct victims. With the deeper crises and barbarism that the country is sliding into recently, May Day has to become a movement and not a celebration. This ship called Nigeria is capsizing and May Day is the day to yell out ‘Mayday! Mayday!’ It is the day to express our distress, suffering, pain, anguish, and torment by those ruling this country! In the words of Fidel Castro: “Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problem of poverty”.

Monday, May 2, 2022, should be for protests and rallies across the country. It should be for demonstrations against the security situation in the country. It should be for protests against the high cost of food in the market. It should be for rallies against the refusal of the federal government to pay university lecturers so that students can return to class. It should be for the occupation of seats of government and seats of power over the poor power supply, increased electricity tariff and increased cost of fuel. Monday, May 2, 2022, should be for struggle. There is nothing to celebrate and there is no money to celebrate with. There is no food. Just hunger and prayer! Nigerians were already fasting even before the month of Ramadan.

Already, the DSS had issued a statement to warn the labour leadership to desist from planning or organising protests because that would destabilise the country. Country wey don destabilise already! The same Department of State Services (DSS) that could not prevent any of the terrorist attacks or address the insecurity situation is always more worried about protests happening because protests give the working people their power back and take the power away from the hands of the capitalist state. In his response to the DSS, Ayuba Wabba of the NLC rightly confessed that international standards do not require that labour takes permission from the secret police before undertaking any effective public direct action. He then went ahead to conversely state that the NLC leadership always informs the secret police of their public actions. It is no wonder that the secret police (who already have all the information they need) feel like the NLC is under their order! Why won’t they? When they are still being done the honour of being given formal notices, why won’t they ask you to write a permission letter?

But even if the labour leaders are afraid of flouting DSS orders, May Day events are traditional national holidays that can become our day of rage without any extraordinary mobilisation by the labour leadership. Will the DSS tell the labour movement not to hold May Day events? Can the DSS suppress May Day protests the same way they try to suppress the political quality of May Day celebrations? Last year, during the May Day celebrations, the DSS took over the Eagles Square venue in Abuja such that some of us holding socialist papers were removed from the queue entering the venue and asked to have our papers checked by one of the DSS bosses before they could allow us to enter the venue. Thank God they didn’t stop us from entering the venue that day! What would have happened would have been so crazy and so disastrous! We would have just gone home to sleep and enjoy our national holiday. Yeah, Sleep. That’s disastrous because that’s what we are all doing while our house is burning down. Nigeria’s organised labour needs to wake up now!

Omole writes from Abuja, Nigeria and can be contacted on 09060277591