Dr. Peter Ozo-Eson is the General Secretary of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC. He spoke to journalists on the forthcoming general election, the congress delegates’ conference, amongst other national issues. MOSES JOHN was there.
Ahead of NLC election, how prepared are you?
We think that we are reasonably prepared. The hosting of a conference of the magnitude certainly has a lot of challenges. We noticed that we are going to have the largest number of delegates in our history at this conference.
The delegates are in excess of three thousands. By the time you add the number of invited guest and other participants, we are planning therefore for roughly four thousand people to attend our conference. Clearly, there are logistic issues. The venue of the conference, we have secured. We have secured hotel bookings. We have set up a number of committees that are working.
We are on top of the situation. Other than those, the things that are crucial for the conference are constitutionally regulated. For instance, motions will have to be taken. But the constitution has prescribed the time frame within which motions must be submitted and we have been able to keep to those deadline. We have advertised the candidates for elective position because it is a constitutional requirement.
We have kept to the time frame specified in the constitution. The credentials committee has played its role of looking at the submission on the nominations of candidates. We want to conduct this conference strictly by the rules that we have in place through our constitution. Because once you violate one, no matter how insignificant clause of the constitutional requirement, then everything is opened for negotiation. So, as a secretariat, we are determined to work strictly by the provisions of the constitution.
NLC has been critical of free and fair election. Now you delegate conference is just few days before the national election. What lesson would you want INEC to take away from your election?
Really, we had to agonise in fixing the time frame for our conference.
We had to look at the time table of the national election. One thing that was clear to us was that we didn’t want it to happen within the time frame of the national election. But we were also constraint by the tenure specification of the constitution. We cannot wait until much later. So it was a conscious decision that we would have to finish this, and have enough time for delegates to return to their various bases.
It is true that we have been quite frontal in insisting on free and fair election. Therefore, that in it pose a challenge for us as an organization that we cannot afford to then run our own election and it will be flawed in the way they were run. So that is part of our own determination to see that the easiest way to have a free and fair election is to operate by the rules that have been preset and not to bend them. We are committed to ensuring that that happens. There are two things that can generally determine the smoothness or success of election or their failure. One is the issue of rules. You must play and obey the rules that are guiding the process.
Two, even when you have done that, logistics and administrative capacity are also crucial to the success of elections. So, one must try to ensure that machineries are in place to ensure that we do not have administrative process that makes the election to become questionable. For instance, you have 3000 delegates and we are going to have ballot papers. If suddenly you have shortage of ballot papers, you have thrown the election into commotion.
However, I am talking of the size of our election and I am talking of only 3000 plus. But for the national election and in fairness to INEC, if there are challenges associated with ours, you can multiply that in millions to the challenges that they face. So, while we would want to set the example of a well-run election by our own, you will also want to be fair that INEC cannot be measured by what exactly we do. The spirit, yes! But in terms of magnitude, they have greater challenges and so before we call failure or success at the national election, we have to bear that in mind.
What criteria were used in screening candidates for the election?
If you pick our constitution, there are areas that deal with conference as prescribed procedures and things that need to be done. For example, in the constitution, it is stated that a candidate seeking an elective position will be proposed by the individual’s own union.
They can be seconded by other unions. If therefore the credentials committee sees a nomination and looks at the proposing union and it is different from the union of the candidate, it raises a problem. Those are in the constitution. There was logic to it because we want cohesiveness within unions. We don’t want a situation where somebody is not working or active within his union and then he would just go to other unions to be endorsed and then he becomes a candidate at the central level. I just gave that as an example. So, the credential committee has those sets of requirements and then looks at every nomination against the requirement, where there is some problem, it then has to make a report to the secretariat.
After the last delegate conference and your election, there was crisis in the congress due to the perceived role or otherwise of the administrative staff. This led to an unfortunate situation whereby the former General Secretary was relieved of his duty. Some affiliate unions also threatened to withdraw their membership. What mechanism have you put in place to ensure that this doesn’t repeat itself?
The union or unions that were involved in that, they must have their reasons. I must say, I am not new to the congress; I was present at that conference. I never saw any issue in the process of that election that could then be regarded as having compromised that election. I want to be honest.
The relevant constitutional committees were set up. They worked. In terms of elections, the most important is the credential committee. Actually it was chaired by the president of the union that was in the forefront of the issue you are talking about. So I cannot therefore see the president of a union presiding over a process and deliberately working to undermine the candidate of his union. There are issues, politics. At every level there are issues. When you win, you may be happy.
When you do not win, you may have your own explanation for not winning. My take is that luckily, in between the conference, we have gotten over this issue that arouse from that process. The same people are part of the fold and will be participating on equal footing with every other person in this conference.
For me, all we can do to ensure that we do not have problem is that we do things openly. We do things by the rules and transparently. However, once you have more than one person contesting for a position, the result is that there must be a loser and a winner. Our appeal to all our comrades who are contesting for all positions is that they should please do their campaigns and canvassing but at the end obey the decisions of delegates because delegates are the one that will determine those who are coming to those positions.
Some members who are retired, can they contest for elective positions?
The National Union of Pensioners (NUP) under our constitution have equal right with other union, so if a pensioners want to contest for a position, and is a member of NUP, is free to contest because if his union which is the NUP sponsor such a person and is seconded by other unions he or she can contest without any challenge.
The congress said 2015 will be a tough year, what efforts have you put in place to ensure your members are protected?
The challenges of economic this year, one does not have be an economist to know what is happened. The first vehicle of transmission of any nation is the national budget and also the state’s budget, all of them; these are also vehicle of transmission to what is happening with the international price of oil into the domestic market.
We have seen what it has done to the national budget, before the price crashed, proposal has already be submitted for the national budget, benchmark of oil has been fixed and everything has been done but the reality of international price fall has occasioned a withdrawer of those proposal and a drastic downward revision. Even what is revised and resubmitted today is probably not sustainable anymore because the price of crude has actually fallen below the revise reference price, so clearly there are challenges we have to face within the year.
Our own position, that is the spirit of the New Year massage, was that when this type of situation arises, adjustment needs to be made but it is when you make the adjustment that we believe is crucial. Our resolution is that the adjustment must not be made on the expense of the working class, this is to say we can’t accept you saying because of the situation you cannot carry the number of civil servants that we have, meaning you are going to lay off, that will be making workers the scapegoat of the failure of economic planning because all the time oil price was high, we have continue to insist that you needed to use the proceed to diversify the economic, it is the inability to do it that put us in this quagmire.
So we do not expect that workers will be made the scapegoat. If any government, state or Federal seeks to cut the workforce as the adjustment, we will resist it and that is our resolution. Secondly the situation we saw that you start owing workers’ salaries and we have not heard of any state that is owing the Governor a salary, honestly in the logic that a state become so broke, we expect that the last person to take his own entitlement is the more comfortable.
I cannot employ workers for instance and rather than to cut down my expenses, I will rather not pay them, this we do not expect this government to do that in the expense of workers. We have publicly suggested that the adjustment be first and foremost start with the cost of governance, we have been arguing some certain areas of the cost of governance, and not the well bill per say and that we can start to reduce those without affecting workers.
We mention for instance, the maintenance of the presidential fleet, the size of the presidential fleet, if the country is rarely is a difficult situation, and it should cut down the size of the presidential fleet. If you go to ministries and a meeting is taken place, in some, you see Chinese restaurant having a desk catering for the entertainments, we are saying in the spirit of the time cut those and serve water with meat pile or garden egg and apologies that is it in the spirit of the time and save the money.
These are ways that we do believe, but there are even more fundamental ways, we know that this country went through a deliberate process of monetisation to help in cutting down the cost of governance, so that we pay for your allowances instead of buying a car but after all these the high level officers found a new scheme, they take the monetisation and pocketed it but yet every vehicle they use or their wives uses is still in the expense of public funds.
They are crafty by either using utility or projects vehicle and we are still paying for the same vehicles. Also if a Governor is going from A to B and has 20 or 10 SUVs in his convoy, what is the problem? Won’t he arrived from point A to B if he use two others may be one in front and the other behind, so let cut on those because we believe is possible to do that and through that we can maintain a regime of tightening the belt without visiting it solely on workers. It could be asked would workers not bear anything, of course they will, as you are aware there are many collective agreement that is due for renegotiation, the reality of the situation will be moderate the type of demand for the review of wages and all those and that is how workers sacrifices comes in too.
How about the fallen price of oil at the international market but Nigerians still purchase at N97?
We have raised this matter and we are equally working on it. Because definitely with what has happened to the price of oil this is the time that Nigerians at least for the first time ought to feel some relived but in order. to prevent the benefit from coming to citizens they quickly manipulated the devaluation. Because the heavy one day 13 to 11 naira devaluation, what it did was simply, since we are still depended on an import regime, if you look at the template of Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), the two major drivers of the recommended pump price is the price of crude and the exchange rate.
So the price of crude is exacting this downward pressure on the recommended price in order to prevent it from translating to benefits for Nigerians, the devaluation did the opposite and we are arguing that Nigerians shouldn’t take this, the pump price of fuel should come down and is a very simply arithmetic the PPPRA template is on their website change that and injects the current price of crude oil into that template artificially for now use the exchange rate just before the devaluation, when you do that computation you will then see that the recommended rated price for PMS today ought to be much below how much we are paying now and we are insisting and demanding that Nigerians must receive some of the relieved brought about the oil price fall.
Although by law it is the board of PPPRA that ought to discuss this and take decision, government has deliberately refused to constitute the board of PPPRA. We are institutional members of the board by law so government cannot prevent us from that discussion, the labour groups have a quite number of representative. NLC and TUC have one slot each, PENGASSAN and NUPENG have one each and Road Transport Workers also have a slot, so if you check those five representative from the board of PPPRA, if they are not ready to have their own people they nominated politically then allow the institutional members including one from the government and others continue to function rather than one individual in the name of the chief Executive of PPPRA to be making decision which by law vested in the board of the PPPRA these are the demands that we are making so that we can sit down and discuss what the correct price should be.
As one of the delegates to the last National Conference, are you not bother that the report seems to have been swept into the carpet?
I am, but even at the Conference some of us articulated that let complete this thing and the documentation because of what is facing the nation, that is the general elections and all those, but the degree to which the implementation was going to be possible fully was going to be rather difficult.
But we do not expect that nothing at all will be done, because we thought that there are some aspect of the reports that ought to be quickly taken and action built around it. Take the insurgency for instance, there were proposals and recommendations on Boko Haram matter and we thought that these are things which should quickly take out from the reports and constitute framework to try and see how they will work.
The fact that nothing at all has been done and the thing seems to have been swept into the carpet is disturbing. I do hope that Nigerians generally will agitate and insist on some of those recommendations being brought up even within the framework of the electioneering that is going one now because is not just sufficient what we are saying that if we are elected we will stop the insurgency while we can start distinguishing between the contestants and their parties.