Ngozi James
The People’s Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M) has condemned the move by Nigerian governors to pay and lay off certain categories ofncuvila servants, saying its a clearer declaration of war against Nigerian workers.
Nigerian governors had advised the federal government to offer federal civil servants who are older than 50 years a one-off retirement package to exit the service, in bid to prevent the nation from imminent economic collapse.
The movement, in a In a statement on Sundayjointly signed by Prof. Omotoye Olorode and Comrade Jaye Gaskia, members of the TPAP-M Secretariat, charged the working people and the entire labour movement [workers in all sectors, farmers, students and youth, the unemployed and the aged to must #Resist the escalating hardship before and after 2023 general elections.
“The lies they told for over forty years to reduce working people to slaves have been exposed! The economic and social policies of Nigeria’s IMF/World Bank ruling class governments have generated poverty, inequality, unemployment and generalised violence [armed robbery, banditry, cultism], unemployment, ethnic and religious hatred and fear among our people, workers’ unions are being banned and governments [governors] are threatening to lay off workers. Nigeria is highly indebted and they will borrow more!,” the statement read.
The movement further deplored the state of the public-funded education sector and the “unending neglect of public hospitals and public health workers.” The movement knocked the call by some Nigerian Medical Association [NMA] “leaders” for govenrnent to privatise public hospitals, describing it as embarrassing and alarming especially following failure of privatised organisations in the country.
The statement read on part, “TPAP-M observes that having stolen Nigeria bankrupt, the ruling class is declaring formally that it is abandoning the masses and a country impoverished through their greed and the IMF/World Bank policies. The ruling class is declaring that although they are not prepared to end their rape of the treasury, and abandon the disastrous economic policies they have been following; they are nevertheless intent on pushing the burden of the crisis of their own making on the heads and shoulders of the working people.
“In calling the attention of Nigeria’s working people to the orchestrated decay of public-funded education sector and the irrelevance of privatized sector of education, two weeks ago, TPAP-M exposed IPPIS [World Bank’s, Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System] as the strategic machine, for destroying public-funded education and public service generally. That was after the failure of government propaganda about the so-called ghost-workers in the universities and the public service generally! In any case, there can be no Ghost-workers without ghost-employers who are complicit in, and actually orchestrate such ghost employment.
“And in spite of the heavy weather on the media that President Buhari gave Education Minster two weeks to resolve the crisis of government abandonment of public-funded tertiary education, and at the end of the ultimatum, governors including APC’s Fayemi of Ekiti State have banned ASUU, NASU, etc. in their state higher institutions.
“TPAP-M already alerted the Nigerian masses of the unending neglect of public hospitals and public health workers. The National Association of Resident Doctors [NARD] are threatening a nationwide strike; NARD informed that doctors are owed months of salary arrears in some states! And what is more they have never been paid the reviewed hazard allowance negotiated more than a year ago.
“And, having regard to the continued deterioration of the facilities in public hospitals and healthcare delivery outfits and neglect of health workers, TPA-M is alarmed, embarrassed and disappointed about the report that some Nigerian Medical Association [NMA] “leaders” are advising government[s] to privatise public hospitals. This curious advice is coming after fourdecades long patriotic struggles of NMA and NARD in defence of the right of Nigerian masses to affordable health care and universal coverage. The said scandalous proposal by some of the alleged leaders of NMA is coming in an atmosphere of pervading post-privatization collapse of privatized public assets (power, water supply, housing, banks, public buildings, public transport, etc); not to mention absolute non-affordability of medicine, medical consultancy etc. in private hospitals, coupled with pervading threats to life via self-medication and “medical care” by fake doctors and quacks); and in a country where foreign embassies set up tables to recruit medical doctors and other health personnel in the capital city.
“Clearly, the virulence of the siege against Nigeria’s independence and sovereignty cannot be more vigorously epitomised than is being openly orchestrated especially against public service workers who are the arrow head of the trade union movement and therefore, organised working class power which insist on workers right to association. “