BY REV FR. GERALD NWAFOR
This is the month of May.
The month in which we celebrate our workers in all traditions be it civil, religious, social, and filial. Three most important factors drive humanity to go the extra mile. The first one is life. The quest for survival drives all living beings to move toward life. In our days we studied biology, and learned that plants make three movements to keep their life.
The movement towards water, the movement towards light, and the movement towards earth. Other animals also make these movements to survive. I watched a documentary video where birds flew thousands of miles to move away from cold weather (winter) and flew thousands of miles back to enjoy the summertime. You may ask why.
The simple answer is the quest for survival. The same is true of the desert elephants, that travel hundreds of miles to drink during the dry season and also know when to travel back during the rainy season, so they do not get drowned by the river. In the world of today, people leave their families and friends to travel across the oceans and mountains in search of jobs to keep hearts and minds together.
The basis of all the movement in the human kingdom is for survival. Some may say in search of a better life or greener pasture, but it is all for life.The second is the product of the first, which is food. When you are alive you will be hungry and to maintain life, you need food.
I am not talking about luxury. I am not talking about a balanced diet nor am I talking about three square meals. I am talking about just food to be alive. I grew up where a three-square meal was a dream. We had one-zero-one. We had zero-zero-one. We had one-zero-zero. And we had one-one-zero. We never had one-one-one or zero-zero-zero.
The students of the middle-class Nigerians in the 80s would understand the hieroglyphic writing which simply means that zero means no food, and one means there was food. So, the three-square meals mean one-one-one while no meals mean zero in the food chat in that order (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I am here today not because I had three square meals but because I had food.
I do not think that in the calculation of events today in Nigeria, the civil servants would boast of one meal a day.The third is what distinguishes human beings from other animals not because the other animals do not need it but because they find theirs in nature where they live. It is called shelter. Human beings call it house or home. I did a little work in Eastern Europe in 2019.
In most Eastern European countries, the government may not provide you with food, but they must make sure you have a home. Even if you have no job, you must have a home. On inquiry, they said that it will cost less to keep the homeless inside a house during winter compared to picking up thousands of dead bodies across the street. All human beings need shelter. The workers of Nigerian origin have presented the government of Nigeria with the amount that would help them to survive by taking care of their lives, food, and shelter.
I do not want to go into the extras that are very vital in the 21st-century survival packages of human civilization. For example, clothing, cars, electricity, school fees, medicals, and many more. I just want the government to be human and sincere in dealing with their fellow human beings in Nigeria called workers.
The lowest house rent in Anambra today that will take care of a worker in the village is above 10,000 Naira. I am not talking about Onitsha, Awka, Ekwuluobia, or Nnewi. A bag of rice is 45,000 Naira, and a tuber of yam is between 5,000 and 7,000 Naira. I do not remember how much they sell paracetamol because I have warned Headache to stop worrying me since there is no budget for it.
Now let us come to the meat of the discussion. The minimum wage of a worker in Nigeria is 30,000 Naira a month and some of these workers have families of six, since there was a campaign to have fewer children and the government has said that they will only take care of four and no more. Let us calculate the 30,000 Naira for those living in the village because if we use the Awka citizens where rent is 35,000 Naira it means they would borrow to pay the rent and borrow to eat and borrow to go to work.
So back to the villager who received 30,000 Naira at the end of the month. If 10,000 Naira goes to the landlord and the remaining 20,000 Naira goes to food stuff. I wonder how he will get the kerosene or cooking gas to do the cooking. I do not know the answer. I know the workers have presented or requested 615,000 Naira ($400) as a new minimum wage.
The government should not look away, they must arrive at a middle ground.I grew up in a family where my parents were civil servants in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. We were seven kids. We all went to school. We had food to eat daily although not three-square meals. We lived in Onitsha at the time. We had three rooms.
We went to special lesson schools for mathematics and the English language. We did not have the luxury of private cars. But my parents never complained about their salary. It was always manageable. Civil servants were the cream of society. They carried with them the dignity of labor and service.The government of every country cares about their people and most importantly the people that help them to serve the public. I think the Nigerian government should take proper care of their workers.
