On NLC Strike

I am here at home, yawning and may waste the whole day browsing.

When I wanted to visit my bank this morning, my account officer there told me that they have not opened to customers yet. That was around 9am. It is now 12am and the answer is the same.

I never took the NLC threat seriously, believing that a sort of common ground will be arrived at between it and the government before it gets to actual strike. It seems that has not been achieved yet and the strike has started.

I also thought that even when the union goes on strike it will be ineffectual. We Nigerians will go about our normal businesses and the discredited union leaders will back off. But the response from my account officer has brought me back to my senses. I was expecting some transfers from some customers today. I checked my phone for any alert. Shiru. There was none.

I started thinking more seriously. I asked myself: what if the banks join the strike as they seem to do here in Jos? This will no longer be a joke wo. That means all the transactions for my raw materials which I do online cannot happen. I immediately concluded that though I am not a civil servant, I have a stake in the strike. And since I have a stake, then it will be cowardly not to have a take.

My take is that the strike should stop such that I can go about my normal business. Shi ke nan. I am not looking for any more trouble. I am done with the subsidy debate and want to move on from mourning to facing the challenges it portends. So strike must end. But how?

No one expects the NLC to be bullied. No sensible government or individuals in the country can disregard the Labour. It is impossible. We may not like their stand but we cannot force the horse to drink from the river.

On the other hand, right in its decision or wrong, government is government. We cannot force it to chicken out easily. Governments have the biggest ego, much bigger than those of unions and individuals.

We the citizens - the reasonable and responsible ones I suppose - are thus caught in the middle. This is our government. We voted for it. This is our President, our General, the Peoples' General - as I dubbed him back in 2002. We must not allow NLC to strangulate his government. Agreed.

And this is our NLC too, the only institution that we can deploy any day to fight on our behalf effectively, for it alone has the capacity to shut down the country. We need it tomorrow as we needed it in the past to fight for our rights. The worker must not be foolish to ridicule it. He will soon need it to get a better pay when inflation starts to cut deep into his earnings.

What is true for workers regarding Labour is also true for the ordinary citizen who remains powerless except during national elections. The NLC is the cover behind which we will hide to fight any tyrant any day. Granted that this is not that day because we have a pro-people President. What of tomorrow, when he is not there or when power turns him against us? Ai don tuwon gobe ake wanke tukunya. Only the half-intelligent can sacrifice his tomorrow for a passing today.

So we are like children witnessing a serious misunderstanding between our parents. What do we do? We should appeal to both for understanding. If they refuse, we call on elders whom one or both of them respect to intervene. But it will be stupid for us to sacrifice one parent for the other.

We must therefore emphasize that government and NLC must return to the negotiating table. They must reach an agreement as soon as possible - if possible, now. Threats of no pay from government on the one hand and of indefinite strike from Labour on the other are not answers to the problem at hand. They only confound it.

Negotiation is the key to the solution.

That is my take. I cannot wait to see my bank open. In a cashless society, life will just not move without it. I cannot wait to hear tin-tin-tin, the sweet alert sound soon.

Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

18 May 2016