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The Public Service and Current Attempts At Preventing Corruption and Promoting Productivity (III)(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Continued from Tuesday 14, 2014 THIS deregulation of the workers would ensure that it is only workers hard work, stamina and efficiency that will determine how many jobs and therefore, what incomes they can take home. This should reduce the pressure on them to engage in public corruption as well. But when we allow employers, through funny state laws, to strangulate the workers to perpetual penury under one employer and one pay packet whatever sanctions we impose or number of calls for accountability and transparency we make, may not do the trick to reduce dramatically public corruption or "leakage" in Nigeria. For these to succeed, we must think deeply and carefully about urgently deregulating the Nigerian workers. It is quite worrisome to me that the discussions of productivity as currently going on in Nigeria, are also unfortunately, only focused at the firm or industry level. As I have already stated above, one hears regularly of low capacity utilization or under-utilization of industrial potential and those of firms and companies due to one reason or the other. But little is said when discussing low productivity in Nigeria, of the individual workers. Because of the laws of the land, most individual workers operate below "capacity". Professionals and intellectuals, in particular, are prevented from engaging in private practice or owning and working in their private firms, companies and hospitals even after closing hours from their regular jobs. The few workers that do it today, do so in violation of laws and regulations governing workers' behavior and conduct. Yet, it is only those workers who "violate" these laws that manage to live above poverty levels, in our society. A society that has these kinds of laws and promotes these kinds of practices is bound to encourage and perpetuate labour strikes, low productivity and "under-capacity" utilization of its workers. This, of course, as stated above, has negative consequences for the welfare of the workers and the prosperity and development of the society as a whole. It is unfortunate that the Civil Service Reforms so far have failed to address this dimension in our Public Services. It is even sadder that recent discussions of productivity, worker strikes, public accountability and transparency, should also overlook it. SAP, as we now all agree, was a child' of necessity and served some purposes then. But the point I have tried to make above, is that while SAP and subsequent government actions have, generally, led to favourable policies in the area of privatization and deregulation of the economy and workers' salaries; they have not given commensurate attention to deregulating the workers in our society. To deregulate salaries and fringe benefits and direct employers, including Federal, State and Local Governments, to pay their workers whatever they can afford to pay without deregulating the workers to do whatever jobs they can, even after official closing hours from their regular jobs, to earn more income, is to institute policies that promote and perpetuate labour strikes, mass poverty and brain drain as well as low productivity of workers and even public corruption in our society. This structural abnormality cannot be solved by simply launching another grand campaign of War Against Indiscipline and Corruption or setting up additional corruption control agencies, making stiffer laws, or merely insisting on public accountability and transparency, as it has been previously done. My view, as presented hopefully clearly in this paper, is that the Government should actually deregulate the Nigerian workers particularly because it is a democratically elected civilian government. Democratic governance entails deregulation of salaries and labour at the same time. It is my honest submission that if previous regimes had gone ahead to deregulate salaries and fringe benefits payable to workers for the benefit of employers and industry; the Government also has a moral duty to deregulate the workers too, for the benefit of their welfare and national prosperity. As my contribution to the process of bringing this about and helping to solve the growing labour strikes across the nation, I make the following recommendations: VI.POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS (1) A Presidential Labour Deregulation Committee should be set up to work out the implications and modalities for the successful implementation of the recently reviewed salaries and wages in the light of the concomitant deregulation of the Nigerian workers along the lines that have been suggested here. This practice has already been found to be very effective in stemming down workers strikes and repeated agitation for increases in salaries and wages, promoting high productivity, improving workers' take home pay, discouraging brain drain, reducing public corruption and improving, dramatically, public accountability and transparency in countries, such as the United States, Israel, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa and most recently, in Ghana. (2) Government should direct the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, to revise the Nigerian Labour laws with a view of deregulating the Nigerian workers as suggested in this paper. (3) Nigerian Governments at the Federal, State and Local levels must learn immediately that "Minimum Wages" are not the same with "Minimum Earnings". The focus so far, seems to be on the ability to pay by employers. But salaries and wages must be earned. So, we need to focus on the ability to earn. When labour is deregulated, workers' salaries and wages are calculated purely on the basis of hours, days, and weeks worked in a month. In Nigeria, most workers come to work very late, leave their offices for several hours on non-official matters, sit idle discussing with visitors or themselves and leave work before closing hours. Yet, at the end of the month, they are paid their usual monthly salaries and wages. This is very wrong. If employers stick only to the actual hours worked, there would be enough money even at State and Local Government levels to pay the announced minimum wage of N18,000.00 per month. When workers are deregulated, there are metres placed at their entrance to their work places. Their computer print-out is used to calculate their salaries, so that whereas the minimum is N18,000; most workers would earn less than their stated salaries monthly, if strictly followed. (4) Government must accept that there will be no end to agitations for more pay on the part of workers, where labour deregulation is not enforced. No sooner than increases are made, traders and landlords will increase their prices and rates, rendering such pay increases meaningless. The Federal Government must do as the USA did in 1930s and Ghana in 1992. Pay workers, not for a whole day, but for only 8 hours - 8a.m to 4pm. Workers should use the remaining hours in a day to augment their income from whatever legal sources they can, after closing from their offices. In fact, to conform to international best practices, let Nigerian workers be entitled to one hour break in the afternoon, say 12.00 - 1.00 pm. This has been found to reduce loitering during working hours; refresh the workers by allowing official time to take their lunch and increased their overall performance and productivity on the job. This way, they can be made to report to work at 8.00 am but close at 5.00 pm having gone on break for one hour in the afternoon. Still, they would have put in 8 working hours per day as it is the practice world-wide. Other workers, such as Cleaners, could be employed for only half-day (four hours a day - from 6 am - 10 am). They report to work before other workers come. The salary for one Cleaner, therefore will be N9,000 even at the N18,000 minimum wage since they will be engaged officially for only half-day. They should be free to move on to other jobs, to their shops or farms at 10.00 am. Hence, the focus on the ability to earn under a deregulated labour system. (5) Salaries and wages of University Professors and other top-level professionals should be consolidated, even though only what an individual actually earns will be paid each month. Once an individual is appointed/promoted to such a position, he/she would theoretically be entitled to the salary and other fringe benefits therein. The present elongated salary scale has great problems. The consolidated salaries and fringe benefits for Professors and other such high level professionals should be comparable to those to be enjoyed by political appointees, such as Special Advisers, Ministers and Heads of Parastatals, Chief Executives and other Extra-Ministerial Departments and High Court Judges. (6) The Armed Forces, Police and Security Personnel could be exempted from labour deregulation because of the national security nature of their jobs. Instead, their salaries and wages should be drastically increased as compensation. (7) Government should mount her own "Skills Mobilization Programme", as it is known in Ghana, or "Head Hunters Programme", as it is known in Israel, to attract home highly qualified Nigerian professionals and intellectuals currently abroad whose skills are badly needed at home. When they know labour has been deregulated, they will be willing to come home. (8) Government should fight the general dependency on Government by workers. Fortunately, the policy of worker deregulation will shift the burden of individual and family prosperity in this country away from Government. Workers can now blame themselves if they fail to make enough money to buy a car or build their personal houses. The positive national security implications for that kind of mass perception is quite encouraging and enormous. (9) Abolition of the contradiction inherent in deregulating salaries and wages without deregulating labour as well. What has been obtainable in this country till date is that Government over- regulation has paradoxically worked persistently against self- reliance, harmony in worker-employer relations, and high worker productivity. In a sense, therefore, Government is partly responsible, unknowingly, through worker over-regulation, for promoting poverty, inducing low productivity, encouraging brain drain, public corruption and general and specific cases of indiscipline, and above all, slowing down our individual and collective prosperity in Nigeria. For the policy of public accountability and transparency to work, workers must be deregulated as well. Besides, democracy means freedom for employers and workers as -well, For this to hold, it means that salaries and labour must be simultaneously deregulated. Otherwise, we should expect more problems in Nigerian labour-industrial relations. We should also expect more brain drain, public corruption and the other ills discussed above to continue and become more severe in Nigeria in the years ahead. This need not be so if we want to realise the goals of the Transformation Agenda and Vision 20:2020. There is need, therefore, to quickly deregulate the Nigerian workers to make it easier for the attainment of national development and prosperity in Nigeria. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1.Beginning perhaps, with Ali A. Mazruis, The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis, London: Heinemann (1985), there have been more recent excellent volumes on the subject of good governance, development and democracy in Africa. Among these are Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa, Washington D.C., Brookings Institute, (1996), Martin Meredith, The State of Africa, London; The Free Press, (2006); Nasir El-Rufai, The Accidental Public Servant, Ibadan: Safari Books Ltd. (2013) and Dan Mou, National Security and Good Governance in Nigeria, Lagos; AOCED Publications, (2013); Dan Mou, National Security, Good Governance and Democracy in Africa, Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse Ltd., (2014); and Dan Mou. Making of an African Giant: State, Politics and Public Policy in Nigeria, Bloomington, Indiana: AuthorHouse Ltd., (2014); 2.Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, The Transformation Agenda 2011-2015, Abuja; Government Press, (2011), p.5. See also the evaluation of this Transformation Agenda two years after in Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, The Mid-Term Report of the Transformation Agenda 2011-2013: Taking Stock and Looking Forward, Abuja: Federal Government Press, (2013); 3.Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, The transformation Agenda, Ibid; 4.Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Speech at the Retreat and Induction for New Cabinet Ministers, Special Advisers, Permanent Secretaries and Other Public Officers , State House, Abuja on 15th to 16th July, 2011, p.3; 5.Vision 20:2020 is a long term vision document developed by the Nigerian Government as a long term policy focus to year 2020. Its stated objectives are to make Nigeria the 20th largest economy by year 2020. Incidentally, the recent Rebasing of the Nigerian economy announced in April, 2014 has already placed Nigeria as the largest economy in Africa with over Five Hundred Million Dollars Gross Domestic Product. Nigeria is also now listed as the 26th in the World. This makes the dream of becoming the 20th world largest economy by 2020 clearly releasable. Unfortunately, however, by the same April, 2014, the World Bank Managing Director, Prof. John Kim announced that Nigeria was among the 5 (five) poorest countries in the world. Despite the fact that Forbes Magazine announced a few months earlier, that twenty Nigerians were now on its billionaire list; and the Richest African, a Nigerian, Alhaji Aliko Dangote was now the 26th Richest Man in the World. In his May Day Speech, 2014, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan disputed this claim that Nigeria is among the poorest five nations in the world. He stated instead, that Nigerian was a very rich country except for the high levels of inequalities that exist in the country. See The Guardians & This Day News Papers of 2nd May, 2014; 6.Dan Mou, National Security and Democratic Governance in Nigeria Op. Cit.; Al- Rufai, Op.Cit . and Claude Ake, Op. Cit.; 7.Dan Mou, Ibid.; 8.Dan Mou, State Power, Agrarian Policies and Peasant Welfare: Politics of Agricultural Marketing and Commodity Board in Nigeria, Bloomington, Indiana: Author House UK Ltd., (2014); 9.Frank Parkin, Class Inequality and Political Order, London: MacGibbon & Kee, (1971) and his Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique, London:Tavistock Pubblication, (1979) and Crawford Young, Ideology and Development in Africa, New Haven: Yale University Press, (1982); 10.Ibid. 11.See Dan Mou, National Security and Democratic Governance in Nigeria, Op. Cit. and Dan Mou, Political Power, Agrarian Policies and Peaseant Welfare, Op. Cit. ; 12.Incidentally, I have been very much involved directly in these efforts. For those not so familiar with my resume, I served as Special Adviser (National Security Affairs) to the National Security Advisers to the Head of States and Presidents in Nigeria under three consecutive Nigerian Governments, beginning in 1990, for almost a decade. I also held a series of high level Government appointments in Nigeria such as Director of Narcotics Drugs Control in the Presidency; Director of Nigeria Air Force, and Director, Human Resources, Inspectorate Management Services at the Ministry Foreign Affairs. Even more relevant for the present purpose, I authored, with Dr Rose Abang - Wushishi, the private National Security Memo to President Olusegun Obasanjo that led to the creation of Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria.That memo was titled: Towards the Need for the Establishment of an Economic and Financial Crimes Agency in Nigeria" dated 19th July, 1999. President Obasanjo accepted our proposal wholesale and the EFCC was created. I also authored (along with Gen. Chris A. Garuba, Rtd.) the National Security Memo to President Musa Yar' Adua that led to the creation of the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and Amnesty Programme that brought about relative peace in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. This particular Memo was titled: "National Security and the Brewing Catastrophe in the Niger Delta: Rethinking the current Agenda for Restoring order in the Niger Delta and Fast Forwarding the Attainment of President Yar' Adua's Vision for Nigeria." This memo dated 20th August, 2008 was also accepted wholesale and implemented by the Yar'Adua Government and later continued by the President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan's Administration in Nigeria. Both the EFCC, the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs and the Amnesty Programme for Niger Delta Militants, have all proved very useful to Nigeria and Nigerians in dealing with these issues. See a brief discussion of the contents of the memoranda in Lead Times Africa Magazine, Vol.3, No.3 (June- July, 2013) and Weekly Trust on Sunday Newspaper, (June 1, 2013). At the moment, I am serving as a Member, Presidential Jobs Board, the State House, the Presidency Abuja. 13. See, for instance, El-Rufai's discussions and suggestion regarding the Nigerian Public Service which clearly tend towards the over- regulation of the Nigerian workers in Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai, The Acidental Public Servant, Op.Cit; 14. Dan Mou, National Security and Democratic Governance in Nigeria, Op.Cit; 15. Ibid; 16. Ibid; 17. Richard A. Waton, Promise and Performance of American Democracy, John Wiley & Sons Inc; 18. Dan Mou, National Security and Democratic Governance in Nigeria, Op.Cit; and Dan Mou, National Security..., op, Cit; 19. Richard A. Waton, Op.Cit; 20. Ray Akor and Dan Mou, "Capitalist Development and Internal Migrations", Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives. Vol. V, No. 4 (December, 1986), Pp. 5-24; and Dan Mou, Making of an African Giant op. Cit; 21. Ibid; 22. M. P. Todaro, Internal Migrations in Developing Countries, London: Smith and Sons (1980); R. K. Udoh, "A survey of Rural-Urban Migrations in Nigeria", Nigerian Magazine, No. 103 (1975) and his "Migration and Urbanization in Nigeria". In J.C Cadwell (ed.) Population and Socio-economic Change in West Africa, Columbia University Press, (1975); 23. M. P. Todaro, Ibid; p. 75; 24. Ray Akor and Dan Mou, Op.cit; 25. C. Wood, "Structural Change in Household Strategies: A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Rural Migration", Human Organization, Vol. 40, No. 4 (1984); 26. C. Melliasoux, "From Reproduction to Production: A Marxist Approach to Economic Anthropology", in Economy and Society, Vol. 1, No. 1, Pp. 93-105, (1972) and his " The Social Organization of the Peasantry: The Economic Base of Kingship" in D. Seddan (ed.) Relations of Production: Marxist Approaches to Economic Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, (1978); 27. Dan Mou, "Intellectual Discourse and African Development", Journal of Political Studies, Vol. XVII, No 2, (September, 1985); 28. Wood (1984), Op.cit; and Meillasoux (1981), Op.cit. see also Sara Berry, Fathers Work for their Sons, Accumulation, Mobility, and Class Formation in an Extended Yoruba Community, Berkely and London: University of California Press, (1985); 29. Ibid.; 30. Ibid.; 31. Ray Akor and Dan Mou, Op.cit; 32. The examples given above of the two individuals holding multiple jobs represent this phenomenon. These cases are growing fast in Nigerian society and perhaps elsewhere in Africa as well; 33. SAP represents a set of political social cum economic measures that were imposed on African countries in the mid-eighties, by the Word Bank and the IMF. In Nigeria, their implementation started in 1985. For detailed examination of why they were introduced and the negative consequences for the populace and the country that resulted from these policies , see Dan Mou, "SAP and the Relative Autonomy of the Nigerian State in Third Republic", in A.T. Gana and S.G. Tyoden (eds.) Towards the Stability of the Third Republic in Nigeria, Jos: Source Publications, (1991); Dan Mou, "Structural Adjustment Programme and Political Stability in Nigeria", Journal of Politics and Administration, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1989), Pp. 52-56; Dan Mou, "Debt Equity Conversion and the Agricultural Sector", Nigerian Journal of Policy and Strategy (Special Issue), (February, 1988), pp. 106-129; Dan Mou, "SAP and State Autonomy: The Political and Strategic Implications of the Structural Adjustment Programme on Nigeria", Journal of Policy and Strategy, Vol. II, No. 2 (December, 1988) and Lual Deng and Dan Mou, "African Economic Crisis, Structural Adjustment and International Donor Community," Nigerian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. XI, No. 1 (1985), pp. 33-54; 34. Hanza Alavi, "State and Class Under Peripheral Capitalism", in Hamza Alavi and T. Sharni Led.) International Sociology of Developing Societies, London: Monthly Review Press, (1982) PP. 74, (July/August, 1972), pp.59-81. For critique of Hamza Alavi's thesis, see my views in Dan Mou, "Hamza Alavi and the Post-Colonial State Debate", Journal of Politics and Administration, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1988), pp.1-2; and Colin Lays, "The 'Overdeveloped' Post - Colonial State: Re-evaluation", Review of African Political Economy, No. 5 (January/April, 1976), 39- 48. See also a detailed discussion of the growth of the public service bureaucracy in Dan Mou, State Power, Agrarian Policies and Peasant Welfare, Op. cit. and Dan Mou, Making of An African Giant: State, Politics and Public Policy in Nigeria. 35. Dan Mou, State Power, Agrarian Policies and Peasant Welfare, Op.cit; and Dan Mou, National Security, Good governance and Democracy in Africa, Op. cit; 36. Ibid; 37. For a detailed discussion of this, see Ray Akor and Dan Mou, "Capitalist Development and Internal Migrations", Op.cit; and Ibid.; 38. Dan Mou, State Power, Agrarian Policies and Peasant Welfare, Op.cit; and my Making of an African Giant, Op. cit; 39. Ibid; 40. Tunji Olaopa, Public Administration and Civil Service Reform in Nigeria, Ibadan: University of Ibandan, Press, (2009); 41. Ibid; 42. Ibid; 43. See Foot note 33 above. Bill Clinton's Reccomemmended Readings: 1. Abundance by Peter Damadis. 2. The Social Conquest of Earth - by E.O. Wilson Learn from Spiders - Cooperation & Tolerance & Dialogue. Copyright The Guardian. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |