
These statistics contextualise the problem and evidences the prevalence of industrial conflicts in Nigeria. A cursory look at both the traditional media and social media recently will show an avalanche of news on strike actions. It is pertinent to state that some labour unions are synonymous with strike actions. Undergraduate students and their parents quickly link ASUU to perennial strike actions that have become almost a yearly ritual. Other labour unions are quickly catching up with ASUU in this inglorious position.
The Perceived unfair treatment that workers receive from their employers is one major cause of industrial disputes. Employees often demand better pay and condition of service for
members. Inflation is known to have dealt a heavy hand on workers compensation year in year out. some members get mistreated by employers, and the union provides solidarity for them.
These disputes are supposed to be resolved between disputing parties and must not necessarily result in strikes, and typically strike actions are supposed to be the last resort. When labour unions resort to strike as an instrument of resolving disputes, the entire system is disrupted, and lives, future opportunities and livelihoods are compromised. A lengthy strike negatively affects employment, reduces business confidence, and increases the risk of economic stagnation.
In addition, such strikes have a significant setback on the growth of the economy and investment opportunities. The net loss to the economy in terms of man hours and overall economic loss dents the GDP and depresses the prospect of economic recovery .
Nigerians have suffered so much from strike actions, which have been a recurring phenomenon. Though strike action is recognised in the Nigerian legal system, its use should only be to achieve legitimate union objectives. However, the law stipulates conditions and procedures to adopt for strike actions to be legal. The union must follow the means for the peaceful settlement of the disputes as established by agreement or legislation, and these procedures must be thoroughly exhausted before any strike action is embarked on.Why is there an aberration of strikes in Nigeria today? It almost seems that trade unions and their members savour the idea of strike and are willing to vote for it at the slightest provocation. If the mindset is to go on strike, trade union negotiators stubbornly refuse all reasonable negotiations and wait until strike actions before accepting those terms. With this situation in the country, most Nigerian trade unions get their members to embark on strike at the slightest provocation.
Their members are usually keen on voting down tools as they see it as an opportunity to rest at home or engage in other activities, knowing fully well that they would not lose any of their remunerations. Trade unions in Nigeria usually ensure that one of the conditions that the government must agree with before they can consider calling off a strike action is that none of their members would suffer any consequences from the strike action and that all their earnable salaries and allowances during the period they were not working are paid in full.
Elections into the leadership of most of our trade unions are now a do or die affair as these ‘comrades’, once elected to office, see an opportunity to make stupendous amounts of money. Aside from exploiting the opportunity to control check-off dues that most times runs into hundreds of millions of naira, many of them are alleged to have made money through ‘settlements’ from the employers to the detriment of their members or from government opponents intent on destabilising the system to score political points.
It is common these days to see union leaders use expensive customised vehicles and hideously display opulence. Most of them turn to professional labour leaders without working in any organization.The second reason for incessant strike action is the lack of integrity in the system. Most labour disputes have to do with the non- implementation of agreements. This situation speaks to the issue of the integrity of political leaders and private sector leaders. When contracts and agreements are entered into between negotiating parties in a labour dispute, they must be adhered to in their entirety. When government or management, whether incumbent or successive, refuses to comply with the agreement, it creates chaos and destroys trust in the ecosystem and leads to lengthy strike actions. The problem with this wicked action is that it makes the cheated party not trust the new agreements reached given that old ones are not adhered to. If an agreement is not complied with, it is not worth the paper it is written on, and no one should blame workers for further strike actions in this instance.
nation with an already dysfunctional public sector cannot afford to underfund public services. Funding and review of service conditions need to be continuous in line with inflation rates and cost of living indices.
The consequences of these strike actions in Nigeria are there for all to see. To illustrate, the incessant strike actions by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the organised labour union of lecturers in Nigeria, has left the educational system in tatters. Since 1999, ASUU has embarked on nationwide strikes more than 20 times, and four years of academic calendar cumulatively was lost. And this does not include the avalanche of ‘local ASUU strikes’, whereby a particular vice-chancellor, University Governing Council or state government is at loggerheads with the academic staff of a specific university. The result is that the quality of education offered to Nigerian students has, at best, been mediocre. The academic performance of students is adversely affected, and the entire educational system is almost crippled. These result in half-baked, unemployable students who lack the basic skills necessary to survive a dynamic environment.
In recent times, the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) seems to be competing with ASUU for the trade union most associated with industrial actions in Nigeria. NARD, with 16,000 doctors in their membership, represents about 40 per cent of doctors in Nigeria. They were still on strike at the time of writing ostensibly to push the government to honour its agreement on pay arrears, hazard allowance as well as insurance benefits to families of doctors who have died of the Covid-19 virus.
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