The Federal Government’s intentions to borrow $800 million to pay for palliative care in the form of cash transfers to some poor and vulnerable Nigerians have been roundly denounced by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
The NLC President, Comrade Joe Ajaero, released a statement on Tuesday outlining the Congress’ position.
Ajero referred to the plan to give N8,000 to each of the 12 million poorest households in Nigeria for a period of six months as a farce and a disrespect to the people of Nigeria.
The complete text of the declaration, “PROPOSED PALLIATIVE CASH TRANSFERS ROBS THE POOR AND PAYS THE RICH: WE REJECT IT,” is as follows: The recent but regrettable unilateral increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) under the guise of the so-called subsidy withdrawal has unleashed predictably, as we had earlier warned, unimaginable and unprecedented hardship, sorrow, anguish, and suffering upon Nigerian workers and masses. We have refrained from making further public comments on the contentious issues surrounding this.
“Our resolve is rooted in our strong and unwavering faith in the outcomes of social dialogue processes and its mechanisms, particularly within a democratic setting, which fortunately, at this particular time, all the major stakeholders in the nation’s socioeconomic framework plead to, though some have demonstrably shown that it is only rhetorical.
“However, while it pursues its declared and unstated objectives, the Government of Nigeria appears to have been duped into thinking that using impunity and imperiousness in democratic administration is a wise course of action. This belief, we are confident, has continued to influence the government’s actions since it took office on May 29, 2023, causing it to repeatedly inflict mindless and heartless suffering on the populace without having the decency to uphold democratic principles, which call for extensive and thorough stakeholder consultation on important matters of state.
“Nigerians will recall the Federal Government’s plea for dialogue following its tragic hopeless trajectory in the skyrocketing price of petroleum products and our ensuing demand for widespread industrial action. We also saw how the Federal Government used the courts to obtain an ungodly injunction, which was then delivered on us in gestapo fashion by vehicles stuffed with heavily armed military and police officers. In order to continue serving as the moral compass for public figures, we stayed steadfast in our adherence to the values of the Rule of Law, morality, and democracy throughout all of these provocations. This clarified why we chose to postpone the intended strike.
As things stand, the Federal Government has insisted on following the route of dictatorship rather than returning the goodwill of Nigerian workers, and it has sought to further poor the populace by doing actions that can only be described as looting the people of Nigeria in order to pay and feed the rich.
“It is for this reason that the NLC strongly condemns the decision of the Tinubu-led administration to request the National Assembly’s consent to obtain another tranche of foreign loans from the World Bank in the amount of N500 billion in order to carry out a fictitious palliative measure to mitigate the effects of its ill-considered increase in the price of Premium Motor Spirit.
“Keep in mind that the U$800mZ, which was previously suggested before this government devalued the Naira, was worth approximately N400b at the time but is now worth approximately N650b. This is where the proposal to distribute N500b comes from.
“The plan to give N8,000 to each of the so-called 12 million poorest Nigerian households for a period of six months insults our collective intelligence and mocks our endurance and steadfast belief in social discourse, which the government may have, however pretentiously, alluded to.
“The further plan to divert our collective inheritance into the pockets of public officials whose oath of office requires them to safeguard our nation’s money in the amount of N70 billion and the judiciary in the amount of N36 billion is the most callous, careless, and audacious. We suspect that the other branches of the government may have been directly and explicitly bribed to accept the anomaly, possibly via the use of hush money.
“It is inexcusable that a government would put up a proposal that blatantly favours the wealthy in public service at the expense of the poor after imposing such hardship on the people in less than two months after taking power. The government has been looking for methods to steal from the extremely poor Nigerians so that the privileged can get richer, which is what this means all this time.
“There is no other way to explain the proposal to pay a misery sum of N8,000 to each of the mysterious poorest 12 million households for six months, which amounts to N48,000 and pays just 469 National Legislators N70b or about N149m each while the Judiciary that has about 72 Appeal Court Judges, 33 National Industrial Court Judges, 75 Federal High Court Judges and 21 Supreme Court Judges and a total of about 201 Judges receive a total of N35b or N174m each. It is best to leave it up to Nigerians’ imaginations as to what the members of the Executive Council would receive if these other two arms are expected to receive this. Perhaps they will receive the remaining N150 billion.
“Not only are these measures undesirable to Nigerian workers, but they are also authoritarian and undemocratic. It is not the result of social conversation, which would have led to jointly negotiated decisions by important national players. We had believed that this government, given the circumstances surrounding its emergence, ought to have been a stickler to all the preachments of the fine tenets of democracy, which would have bolstered its reputation and started to build legitimacy for itself; regrettably, it appears to be in a hurry to abandon the few vestiges of democracy that the previous administration left behind.
“Furthermore, the Federal Government’s actions demonstrate that it lacks faith and confidence in the Presidential Committee it established to thoroughly examine the effects of the increase in the price of petroleum products and offer guidance on how to mitigate its adverse effects on the populace. This suggests that the government may not truly be interested in the Committee’s work and may have merely used it to provide the impression to the Nigerian people that it was addressing the effects of its policies.
“We fail to comprehend why the Federal Government would try to discredit itself, as its behaviour shows. Why not hold off until the Committee has a chance to convene and formulate the necessary recommendations, which would then direct the government’s monetary and fiscal policies? The fact that it is looking to borrow money and asking the NASS for permission indicates that it has already made decisions about what it wants to undertake, has a budget, and therefore needs to borrow money to pay for these activities. It’s a done deal, as they will tell you.
“We emphasise that we do not have faith in the methods used to collect data for the 12 million poorest households, nor do we have confidence in the approaches being taken to distribute the cash transfers. Nigerians are uneasy about the history of such transfers, notably the school feeding initiatives that were implemented even when the kids were at home because of the Covid-19 outbreak and the Trader Moni case, as they provide as a constant reminder of how individuals in public office continue to syphon off our resources. Although we have repeatedly called for this register to be made public, it appears to have turned into an esoteric tool shrouded in secrecy that the grandmasters use whenever an opportunity like this one arises.
It is crucial to notify Nigerians that, despite our demonstrated willingness to start working in the committees, the Federal Government, which organises the meetings, has not yet inaugurated the National Steering Committee, putting the proposed committees’ work on hold. The best course of action would have been to swiftly appoint the Committees and give them authority to carry out their duties, but as of this writing, nothing has been done aside from the government’s ongoing borrowing binge and subsequent allocation to themselves, which is what Nigerians want more than the government does.
“NLC would not want to keep taking part in the customary farce of committees whose recommendations are never put into action. We wouldn’t want to waste the time of Nigerians, especially workers, on committees that are already set up to fail and are therefore disregarded. We don’t want to provide the administration a pretext for getting away with the suffering it has inflicted on the populace. We don’t want to support impunity in any way.
“As a result, if the government does not wish to halt these haphazard activities that it is pursuing in the name of palliatives, we will be compelled to constructively reconsider our involvement with the government on this vexatious subject and take matters into our own hands,” the letter continued.
