AS the crisis of Nigeria’s ruling class and World Bank economic policies continues to ravage Nigeria and Nigeria’s working people, The Peoples Alternative Political Movement [TPAP-M], committed to Socialist Transformation of Nigeria, remains in full solidarity with the working people.
At various levels, especially in the public- funded education sector, the World Bank- sponsored ruling class governments of Nigeria have continued to wage a war of attrition against Nigerian workers at federal and state levels.
According to the report by National Record [June 22, 2022], “NUT Threatens National Strike over sack of 2,357 Teachers by El-Rufai”, El-Rufia’s Kaduna State Government has continued the war against Nigerian workers in that state. The sack of so many teachers, according to the report, was sequel to the “…refusal by the President of NUT and some teachers to write a competency test organised by the Kaduna State Government among other things”. It was also reported that the NUT advised, correctly, rather training and retraining of teachers instead of the clearly tendentious policy of writing competency tests.
Similarly, in Ondo State, a more callous and equally inhuman variety of the El- Rufai war against workers was going on against teachers and other categories of workers. This was according to an open letter dated June 16, 2022 by Dr. Bukola Adeyemi Oyeniyi [an Associate Professor] titled, “Milking Gnats in Ondo State: An Open Letter to Governor Akeredolu”. The open letter, among other things, observed that teachers’ and nurses’ salaries have not been paid since December 2021! In the case of certain categories of teachers, the open letter called public attention to new requirements in Ondo State that the acquisition of a Master’s Degree in Education is a requirement for promotion. The alternative to a Master’s Degree as a condition for promotion is said to be a mandatory six-months training at the Public Service Training Institute [PSTI] at Ilara Mokin where each prospective trainee will pay N150,000. These are prospective trainees that are owed months’ areas of salaries!
This incredible policy in these hard times, was characterised insightfully by Dr. Oyeniyi as “… milking the lifeblood of ‘gnats’ that your government has turned Ondo State teachers, nurses and other workers into…”!
The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has also been forced to go on strike for over four months now! ASUU has been insisting, for years, on decent pay and revitalisation of the public-funded universities. So have other unions [NASU, SSANU, etc.] in the Nigerian University system [NUS]. Since February 2017, FGN’s lackadaisical attitude had prevented the conclusion of ASUU-FGN Renegotiation that was to have commenced in 2002! Yet the Federal and State governments, aided by the National Universities Commission, has continued to establish more universities that are scandalously underfunded!
Amid the consequences of unresponsive and irresponsible government policies in the public sector, strikes are virtually outlawed by routine application of the so-called no-work-no-pay policy [against teachers, doctors, etc.] which is simply a forced-labour regime—if they complain by going on strike, starve them and their families! Of course, the entire education and other public sectors are being actively privatised!
Meanwhile, a very destructive war machine against Nigerian workers of the public service [teachers, doctors, etc.] and the civil service [civil servants generally], has been deployed to further ruin the public service and social services sector. They call the machine Integrated Personal and Payroll Information System[IPPIS]—a veritable World Bank machine which ASUU is protesting against because the goal of IPPIS, is to bring public-funded universities to their knees and advance enhanced neoliberal control and privatization of higher education. And this is why ASUU’s UTAS has been so violently resisted by government[s] in spite of the scandalous inefficiency of IPPIS!
What has happened in the civil service where the resistance of workers against IPPIS has not been as robust as in the University System? Since 2018 [https://tribuneonlineng.com>] especially, the IPPIS World Bank machine had been wreaking untold havoc of sacking thousands of alleged ghost workers! On June 4, 2022, https://punchng.com reported “IPPIS eliminated 70,000 ghost workers, saved government N220 billion – FG”. In spite of this decades of systematic elimination of workers especially in the last two decades of unending ruling-class/ World Bank siege on Nigerian workers, no single FG senior bureaucrat in any MDA has been indicted, convicted, or otherwise sanctioned for illegally employing any one. Neither is there anything to show for the billions of naira that is alleged to have been saved by “eliminating” workers!
And as it had turned out, it is the Accountant General [AGF], who is eliminating workers, that is alleged to be eliminating billions of Naira of public money!
Since 2015, the World Bank and ruling class economic policies have caused increasing public debt, destruction of the naira, high food prices, increased unemployment, increased fuel and energy cost, increased cost of agricultural inputs, reduced accessibility of social services [education, health-care delivery, housing] and high cost of transport. Needless to say all these are further complicated by general fear and insecurity, unpaid salaries and withheld pensions.
As the effect of the comprehensive war against the public sector, particularly the education sector, is unfolding, our people are naturally consumed by the hope that their votes in the 2023 General Elections will change everything. TPAP-M empathises generally with this hope in the power of our votes regarding the 2023 General Elections.
However, TPAP-M must remind Nigeria’s working class that this was how the hopes of the masses of our people were manipulated with elections in 2014/2015. It is the same manipulation of our hopes at that time that has now produced hunger, unpaid salaries and pensions, and the paralysis of social and physical insecurity.
As important as the preparation for the 2023 elections may be, we alert the Nigerian masses that policies that subvert the interests of Nigeria’s working class are proceeding apace. Workers are under economic and ideological siege and the siege is not likely to relent; election or no election!
Organised labour, informal workers, the youth, women, pensioners, and all concerned professionals [doctors, lawyers, etc.] need to #Resist Hardship as it develops daily.
TPAP-M is extremely concerned that various disasters [insecurity, intra- communal violence, etc.] are being promoted or allowed to fester, in order to create a generalised atmosphere of confusion and fear among the masses while more and more exploitative capitalist and exploitative policies are imposed on our people. This exploitation of confusion, fear and disasters has become a standard and powerful instrument of capitalist exploitation.
We call on Nigerian Working people, the Youth, Women, Farmers, the unemployed and all patriots to #Resist [THIS] Hardship. Now!
E-SIGNED
Prof. Omotoye Olorode
Comrade Jaye Gaskia
