The labour movement is presently at the lowest ebb of morality. Some people, who are in the position to advice Comrade Oyelekan also got illegal extension in their respective unions for one reason or another. Oyelekan boasted to us that no amount of petition to the ministry will jolt the officials into inviting us. Truly, we have written several petitions articulating our displeasure, but Ministry of Labour and Employment that is supposed to be regulating us has not seen the need to invite us. We are tempted to believe that what Oyelekan said about the ministry is right!
Browsing: Opinion
The likes of Comrade Akele are rarely mentioned by the bourgeois press during democracy celebrations, particularly June 12, but aside being a working class hero, he was also a hero of anti-military struggles, a hero of pro-democracy struggles and a hero of the struggle for independent students’ unionism being the first secretary of the interim leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students in its formative stages in 1980 before the first full Exco was elected in the 1980/81 session under the presidency of Tanimu Yakubu of Bayero University, Kano.
Though some damage may have already been done by the festering virus of bad leadership; but if not timely tackled and halted, it is bound to escalate and destroy the labour movement.
The media has been awash with rape incidents, and even as I write, it remains the most trending, perhaps only second behind covid-19 news. It is a crime that many women dreaded and hardly recover from. A sense that one must always be on guard, vigilant and alert, a feeling that causes a woman to be edgy with anxiety if someone especially a stranger is walking too closely behind her; a psychological disposition that exerts a toll on her health. The fear and distress are all a daily part on the life of many women globally.
With no palliatives and no minimum wage for workers in most of the states of the federation and citizens were confined to their homes as a result of the government-imposed lockdowns and restrictions, many workers especially those who are self-employed and those working in the informal sector ran out of money to buy basic necessities for themselves and their families.
The continued attacks, looting, kidnapping, raping and killing of the people in Katsina, Zamfara and Sokoto states have cast fear in the minds of many people in the states and forced a significant number of residents to abandon their communities. Even before the lockdown, many of the villages in the states have become no-go areas. Some villages have been deserted for long and many people are being forced into IDP camps in their own states which is posing great humanitarian crisis in the region. The most baffling part of the attacks is how the bandits are finding their ways to these villages despite the restrictions of people’s movements including inter-states travels. One might be tempted to ask: “is the lockdown only for the peaceful citizens?”
There are no better quotable quotes on racism than Mandela’s who lived, confronted and defeated apartheid. On 15 October 1962 Mandela in a statement he said: “I detest racism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man”. A relook at the viral tape of George Floyd begging for breath (“I can’t breathe”; “They’re Going to Kill Me) confirms how truly barbaric racism and xenophobia could be.
More pointedly, I am openly using this auspicious medium, to invite all our compatriots to kindly devote more than a passing interest in the much lauded and vociferously marketed Power Contract that was recently signed between Nigeria and Siemens, Germany, ostensibly to rescue the battered sector from imminent collapse.
When a system is built on injustice and exploitation, it can only be maintained through violence, insolent bravado and deceit!
This was the historical context that gave Majek Fashek the wings to fly. Artists around the world were also becoming increasingly socially conscious, and their art, reflected that fact. It was the age of hope for social emancipation, after the triumph of the anti-colonial struggles of the 1950s and 1970s. The lyrics of their songs, spoke to the major social issues of the times, and more than most musical forms, reggae was a particularly poignant platform that conveyed the revolutionary ideas of the 1970s and the 1980s, as reflected in the works of Bob Marley; Peter Tosh and so many other reggae musicians. Nigerian reggae too, belonged in that sensibility, first with Sony Okosuns and his wonderful songs, and the younger generation such as Edna Ogoli, Ras Kimono and others.