First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly
1970 to 1975 were the enchanting years. Even though I was quite young in age and still in primary school, I was older than about 95% of the possessions in our family home. Every single item in the house was purchased new and peeled out of the packaging right before our eyes. The family cars and the cars of every single family on the street were bought brand new. The motorbikes used by some of the drivers of the “big oga dem” were new. There was money in the air. The National Stadium was built in front of our eyes in Surulere.
The kids also had new toys and bicycles. You never heard an adult complain that they had not been paid their salaries. More likely you heard the adults talk about taking “advance pay” from work once in a while.
When visitors came around the house you heard words like “official car”, “fringe benefits”, “estacode”, “official house”, “car loans” and the “company clinic”. You would have thought that the companies my parents worked for where welfare organisations. Some people even had their kids school fees paid for and had an allowance for foreign holidays in the summer!
The house boys and house girls in the street never complained about late salary payments either. It was always the purchase of ‘original’ materials that they had in mind at the end of the month. Then they trooped off to the tailors for their bespoke “labu” trousers and fancy dresses.
We kids always had coins thrown our way as rewards for errands. The money in circulation meant the adults called you over to buy things for them as soon as the urge took them. The passing hawkers with those fancy songs about oranges and mangoes that could revitalise your destiny had us scrambling out to beckon them into the compound as instructed by the adults. Those were the days when no adult bought any delicacies without buying something for all the kids who had temporarily stopped playing and gathered around the hawker’s tray laden with juicy edibles.
It was polite to act delightfully surprised when asked to choose an orange for peeling. The kids knelt to show appreciation. The admonition of paranoid parents afraid of the poisoning of their kids through food is forgotten as the mini feast commenced. A particular coin that looked like a flat doughnut with a central hole was called Toro. I was fascinated with it. With money in the pockets, you could buy chewing gum that had pictures of football and movie stars in them which we collected. The supply of TomTom, Goody Goody, Trebor peppermints and Coconut Candy were the economic indices of wealth and prosperity for use and always had a yearly growth that peaked at Christmas.
Today, there are so many telling me about their unpaid salaries and pensions. It is even worse when you hear that government departments put these salaries in fixed deposit accounts so that they can keep the interest. Workers naturally become disillusioned as no one signs up for a job then turns up daily incurring transportation and feeding costs with the hope of not being paid.
It is only the sex workers that don’t complain about unpaid fees. With that mission statement “money for hand, back for ground”, it comes as no surprise. To the ashewo ‘paid in full’ crew, one can add the various small businesses that openly discuss the fee before the transaction. The taxi drivers and bus conductors tell you if they have change or not. In buses they say “owo da?” (where is the money?) shortly into the journey. Many small businesses are paid up front and that is an attraction. Many of these self- employed small business owners earn more than many white collared workers however the office guys look better at the end of the day; nice corporate clothes but empty pockets.
Withholding the wages of workers does so much harm to the economy. It destroys a fundamental principle in business. A worker is worthy of his wages. If workers are unpaid and the leaders of a country are fine with it, then they have a perversion. If the people who suffer months of unpaid wages go on and vote in the leaders who have been unaffected by their plight, then the people have a bigger perversion than the leaders and are clearly mandating the leaders to “treat us anyhow”.
Payment for services rendered happens all the time. In childhood, we didn’t expect to walk into the sweet shops and not pay for the goods (except the childhood thieves among us). One sees parents paying for our ice creams when the Fan Ice man cycling past with his cooler is flagged down.
It is heart-breaking to have bills to pay, kids to feed and be told there is no salary. And to add insult to injury, you must report to work as usual.
If everybody in the state was unpaid perhaps it would be a less sorry state of affairs. But when the unpaid look in glossy magazines and see their bosses shining like a diamond in the Nigerian skies, bile rises up the gullet.
Judging from history, things tend to get worse. Not everybody can be self -employed but it’s beginning to look like those with jobs should have a stake in a side hustle even if it’s as part of a co-operative.
The days of the job for life are gone. If the taxi drivers always have clients then the graduates may have to drive for Uber. Likewise, more educated people should train to be butchers as that business even though dirty, is a cash in hand business and the demand outstrips supply.
Nigeria’s salary problem has now created a breed of consumers who now attempt not to pay their bills if they can get away with it. There are many tenants who hate to pay their rent despite having the funds to do so.
Who bewitched us? Like the Hues Corporation, I ask the Salary Bandits that came to afflict the masses, “So I like to know where you got the notion to Rock the Boat.”
