Governors, Thugs And Settlement Of Disputes

 By Owei Lakemfa

In 2011, we in the Trade Union Movement were worried that the new National Minimum Wage of N18,000 consented to by the Federal and State governments, and signed into law the previous year, was not being implemented.

Negotiations had gone pretty well with the Federal Government, but had hit a brick-wall when its team said on a note of finality it had reached the limit of the wage bill it could shoulder. We needed an additional N2 billion. Labour met directly with then President Goodluck Jonathan and he directed that the additional fund be added to the Federal wage bill.

Nigeria And The Politics Of Hunger

 By Sunny Awhefeada 

My generation's first experience of hunger and its attendant crises was in the mid-1980s. My genera­tion here refers to Nigerians born after the civil war and attained teenagehood from 1983 onwards. We have read in history books of how starvation was one of the major tools that was deployed to fight the Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970.

Pictures abound of chil­dren, youths and older people who suffered from the affliction of hunger. Not even the efforts of humanitarian agencies that tried to alleviate the hunger in the refugee camps that littered the secessionist enclave of Biafra alleviated the crisis. Hunger engendered dis­eases which in turn yielded deaths. Many still believe that starvation more than bullets and bombs was what made Biafra to capitulate when it did.