By Dele Sobowale
“How can productivity work in a
place where you have ten people clustering an office, no electricity, trek to
about 11-storey building. Labour punches the button to work no matter what.”
– Dr Tommy Okon, Trade Union Congress, TUC
Dr Okon has captured only a fraction of the miseries of millions of “employed” Nigerians. Before reaching
the office to start climbing the stairs, he/she might have trekked up to eight
kilometres from home to get there. In reality, the relationship between
employers and employees in Nigeria today is much closer to the seventeenth
century slave and slave owner arrangement. After going through the hazards,
including no breakfast everyday, he might still not get paid at the end of the
month. Nigerian workers, at all levels in many organizations, now constitute
the largest group of involuntary philanthropists in the world now.
