MONDAY LINES Workers, politicians, Christmas and unpaid salaries 29.Dec.2014 Lasisi Olagunju Rate this item1 2 3 4 5 (0 votes) I have a friend who works in a Federal Government agency; his wife works for an APC state in the South West. He was not paid his December salary before Christmas. His wife received a salary last in September. Their children were home from school to celebrate Christmas. There was no celebration. Or, rather, the celebration was without the usual family feast. The children said they understood. This is Nigeria. There is gloom everywhere. Whenever Nigeria is ready to write its history, it will not forget this era of governors without conscience and of docile citizens never really interested in casting away their chains. It will be a history of impotent oaths and broken promises. It will be an elaborate narrative, tattooed with ugly punctuations of wickedness. Christmas was last Thursday; New Year celebration is this week Thursday- just three days away. How many state governments remembered to pay salaries of their workers before Christmas? How many did not bother to think about it? How many really are owning October, November, December salaries? And how many governors do not care if this sin is carried over into the New Year? How many still see their workers as civil servants? How many consider them as slaves without a choice? “Salarium” is the Latin root of the “salary” we talk about at the end of every month. That root word means “salt money”. It means money regularly paid out by ancient Rome to its soldiers as “allowance for the purchase of salt.” Its origin leaves no room for speculations as to its good essence. It was meant to sweeten lives after a period of hard work. Any employer who refuses his workers their pay has taken salt from the workers’ mouths. It has consequences. “Slaves have duties but they also enjoy rights which must be respected.” That line belongs to Professor Mwamba Cabakulu in his Dictionnaire des proverbes Africains. What a rather strong way of looking at the benefits helpless people can enjoy in normal societies. But are these normal times? Nigeria of today is not in a mode that can be called normal; and so, if civil servants work and they don’t get paid, it shouldn’t really attract any strong feelings. They have duties, but they do not have the rights to be paid even when there was Christmas to be celebrated. They are slaves. Cabakulu is wrong with his thesis of slaves having rights. Is it not true that “a slave saves money to get married, and his master spends it?” Jean Norbert Vignonde, in a discussion of that Fon (Benin) proverb asks: “How can you claim to possess something when you don’t exist yourself?” I agree with him. That is the real world’s way. It is the law here that government workers exist to be seen only, like dead, standing trees. Like slaves of yore in sugarcane plantations, their lips are eternally padlocked. They mustn’t ever open their mouths to say anything unless they are tired of working. That is the law. You break it at your peril. Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, was on a Lagos television last week to stress that it was not true that he owed workers months of unpaid salaries. “How is it possible for workers not to be paid for months and they will still go to work?” he asked. I smiled. He could be saying the truth that he owed no worker unpaid salaries. There is no way of confirming. The supposed victims are not complaining. But can he ask his colleagues in other states, across all party lines, why payment of salaries has suddenly become secondary to other considerations? I know one, two, three states in the South West where homes celebrated Christmas in hunger. A media report said actually 22 states did not pay salaries before Christmas. New Year will come in three days time. It will also go the way of Christmas. And has there been any protest? Have you heard of one? You couldn’t have because we are a nation of sulking and docile people. Or could it be that the workers are not on the streets because they receive other things from their tormentors, in kind or in cash, not in addition to, but instead of, their legal pays? Where I come from, every festival is meant to be celebrated by all. No festival is strictly religious. Every festival is simply a celebration, an occasion to bond, an opportunity to renew ties and thank God for the gift of life. We celebrate all festivals, religion of birth or of practice notwithstanding. As a child, I derived so much joy with my other Muslim brothers, filing out of our Madrasat to dine with our Christian friends in this season. Christmas rice and chicken we called it. There was no divide in our world. It was one happy universe of happy children. That was the real joy of the whole thing. Now that a gang of leaders are using the costume of democracy to flog our neighbours with hunger, we should all feel outraged. And we are. A denial of comfort to any one, is a denial to all. What this means is that the pall of Christmas without feasts descended on all homes, Christians, Muslims, all. Christmas or no Christmas, denying workers the right to enjoy their earned pay, when they should have it, impinges on societal sanity. Are our governors sane at all? But Nigeria has a texture that confounds. What is combustible elsewhere receives velvet treatment here. The New Year will be here in three days. This season will soon be over. The molten lava of rights deprivation will never result in any volcanic eruption. It will cool soon enough to engender more savage rapes. The talk after January 1, 2015 will be largely the countdown to the next elections. Debates will become red hot at newsstands and in government offices on who should win and who should lose among rapists. The standards will remain same as used four years ago- ethnicity, religion, money. Very few will remember the blanket sufferings of this period. But should we really be worried about all these? Christian patriots should check the promise in Hebrews 11: 30. The Great Wall of Jericho stalling national and individual progress must come down in the New Year. My Muslim brothers should read Quran: 105 (Al-Fil). It assures us of victory in the manner the Almighty defeated an impregnable army of elephants from Yemen. As we enter the New Year, all elephants, trampling with impunity on our canvass of grass, shall be roundly defeated. 2015 will be a year of boundless joy for us all.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 02:04:36 +0000