Even on Workers’ Day, Nigerian Workers Go Hungry: No Salary -By Abdulkadir Salaudeen

In many countries, worldwide, Workers’ Day is a public holiday celebrated on May 1st. It is meant to celebrate workers’ achievements in their struggle for better life. It is also known as International Workers’ Day or Labor Day. In addition to celebration, Ḿay 1st is a day set aside to advocate for workers’ rights and promote fair labor practices, decent work conditions, living wage, and socio-economic justice for workers. It is also an occasion to show solidarity in which workers are united in their struggles for fair wages and other benefits.

It is established from the above that Workers’ Day is actually a day workers are, or should be, in celebrating mood. Are Nigerian workers in celebrating mood? The answer is a resounding NO. Do Nigerian workers have any achievement to celebrate in the face of unnerving poverty that has consigned them into a state of melancholy? The answer to this is also an echoed NO.

But these answers are wrong. We are wrong. I am wrong. Nigerian impoverished workers have a reason to celebrate; it is only that we are not grateful. We should be grateful for being poor. Poverty is a virtue.

Yes, I mean it. Poverty is a virtue. The Nigerian Senate President Godswill Akpabio said it. This could be the reason why the government—in which he is the Third Citizen—continues to stymie Nigerians in the big cauldron to force souls out of their bodies. Because poverty is a virtue, Nigerians, in millions, are forced to be virtuous. In other words, millions of Nigerians are forced to hug poverty in order to be virtuous by a morally ‘upright’ government that likes virtue (poverty) for its citizens but hates it for itself. If poverty is a virtue and our Senate President is not poor, it means, the Senate President, materially speaking, is not virtuous.

Though I know of Nigeria, I don’t know if there are other countries on earth where workers celebrate Worker’s Day in the month of May but are yet to be paid April salary. This is how workers fare under the leadership of the best president Nigeria had had since its independence. Nigeria’s best president has recently come up with a novel practice of best governance by governing the country from France. I don’t know how often President Tinubu would resort to governing Nigeria from foreign countries, but I know that the most recent working leave (whatever that means) took him about 18 days to complete. The President, in those solid 18 days, must have worked around the clock to ‘address’ poverty in the country.  The immediate noticeable achievement recorded in the 18 days working/private visit is the government inability to pay workers as they ‘celebrate’ Worker’s Day.

Even if President Tinubu had decided to pay workers, or in the words of Senate President, decided to “let the people breathe,” workers would still be hungry on Workers’ Day. Poverty-induced hunger, whether salaries are paid or not, has come to stay in Nigeria. Because what the vast majority of salary earners earn today in Nigeria (in both public and private sectors) is only enough to keep them alive in the cycle of poverty from which they have no opportunity to escape. There is no sign that the cycle of poverty into which Nigerians are ensnared would be broken anytime soon.

As workers, if the body language of our rulers in Abuja is anything to go by, we only need to renew our hope of getting more dose of poverty and be resilient since our rulers have assured us that poverty is not a crime. No Nigeria should think he or she is a criminal for being poor. In fact , to quote Akpabio once more “poverty could sometimes be a virtue of God.” And since Nigerian workers are religious people, we cannot, according to Akpabio, “worship God in splendour.” Except we choose to turn against God as workers, we should not harbor the thought of a better life. Thinking about a better life could be counterproductive to spiritual upliftment under the renewed hope regime—a regime that sees poverty as a virtue. This is a pity.

One major take away from 2025 May 1st Worker’s Day ‘celebration’ is that Nigeria’s minimum wage is not a living wage. It is a wage that perpetuates workers’ slavish condition. Nigerians are actually resilient people. They are not talking about working condition. That is to say, they can work under any condition. The least they are demanding is to get a minimum wage that would make basic needs affordable. This least demand is, sadly, what governments at all levels are dragging feet to grant. It is sad to note that, despite hyper inflation that renders minimum wage meaningless without value, there are state governments that are yet to fully implement the minimum wage.

As Nigerian workers continue to struggle to breathe in the stifling economic environment that bites harder and harder, what Nigerian rulers prioritize is the 2027 election. Hunger in the country, increasing insecurity, frequent collapse of national grid, brain drain in the health sector, bastardization of education, etc. are not topical issues and thus do not merit government attention. What graps our rulers’ attention is politics and how to perpetuates themselves in the corridor of power; not governance.

With the near collapse of democracy under this regime which is reflected in the defection of bigwigs from among members of the opposition party to the ruling APC, we can only hope that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), though not political party, would not defect to APC too. If INEC chooses to be an independent commission that it is meant to be, 2027 election, I agree, will definitely be between APC and Nigerians. But with unnerving poverty that makes crumbs appealing to impoverished workers, would Nigerians have the nerve to vote out bad rulers? Wouldn’t rice and sperghetti be used to woo voters to vote against their conscience? Only time will tell.

Meanwhile, rulers in Nigeria should have pity for workers. They should recall that religion is one of the factors they appealed to in order to win election. This means they are people who believe in God and worship God. We have learnt from Sen. Akpabio that we cannot worship God in splendour; and to worship God, we must make sacrifice by giving generously to the needy. Nigerian workers are in need; they are the needy who should be shown generosity. Though we were told by one of our rulers that God cannot be worshipped in splendor, could this be true? If this is true, one wonders if our rulers really worship God because their entire existence is in splendor while those they rule are in squalor. It is high time they prioritized workers’ welfare and the welfare of their subjects. Or are we not their subjects? Happy Worker’s Day.

Abdulkadir Salaudeen

salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com