By Abdullahi O. Haruna
Serious people are too engaged to be unionizing, almost every workforce in Nigeria is unionized. You have family union, tribal union, clan union, senior and junior staff union, transport union, even touts have union; in all of these, non of these guys are producers of tangible goods and services- they leech on the system for survival.
And most of these unions are nothing but self-serving contraptions; they are people in search of power and wealth. The reason union leaders are richer than the people they represents. As a student leader, I was almost impeached because I refused to share dues collected amongst officials of our association. And this applies to almost all unions and associations, beyond the superficial call for members welfare, the real deal is enrichment of their leaders. Another circle of elitism.
Go to the health sector, you will find more associations than you would find study or research groups. Everyone is a comrade without commensurate input. The doctors are divided into groups same with the nurses, same with other healthcare providers and not leaving out the non-professionals.
This same conundrum applies to the education sector, agricultural sector, defence sector, mining sector even religious sector. Everyone is defined by the socialist doctrine of unionism. China has seen discarded this doctrine, the reason it has gone far in conquering the world in all ramifications. Time Nigeria look at the menacing malady of unionisation and chat a way for productive workforce engagement instead of this leeching manifest of few elites deriding the progress of the nation.
Just yesterday, workers of the power sector decided to put the country in darkness because they were asked to come forth for their promotion examinations. Only in Nigeria, we have workers decide how employers should run their establishments. What an impunity!!!
Yeyely musing