Electricity Union’s Strike: NUEE Executives Should See Beyond Their Noses – Government

By Ogbuagu Anikwe on April 11, 2012

The Hon. minister had before now publicly acknowledged the technical abilities of Engr. Uzoma Achinanya and Engr. Akinwumi Bada, the two officers that were asked to proceed on retirement. He would have wished that Joe Ajaero allowed them to enjoy their peaceful retirement. This is because protesting on their behalf would only go to expose issues and circumstances that would have the effect of tinting their hitherto sterling technical contributions to the nation.

Unfortunately, it is a fact that, sometimes, technical ability does not translate to managerial ability. It is ironic to note that the rabble-rousing antics of Joe Ajaero and his cohorts in NUEE was one of the issues that worked against the person that Ajaero is today shedding crocodile tears over his retirement. Or is it possible that Ajaero and the NUEE leadership have forgotten how they ceaselessly dragged this officer to various fora, complaining that he was discriminating against the distribution companies by releasing salaries that failed to harmonise the unprecedented 50% salary increase that the Unions extracted from government as one of the conditions to allow privatisation to go on? The Union’s incessant complaints about discriminatory payment of the 50% salary increase ultimately led to the officer’s poor management rating. As for the other officer,Nigerians are witnesses to two successsive explosions which led to system collapse that plunged the nation into darkness in late March, The fact that the second explosion occured within a week of the first, at the same place and time and under the same circumstances, exposes a lack of attention to detail for which someone in charge ought to be called to account.

As for the ex-HR Director, members of the general public who have ever complained about PHCN staff abuses – including extortion, embezzlement and corruption – are in the best position to judge the fidelity of the culture of staff discipline that this officer superintended. What is disheartening is that it was also not beyond this officer to keep on the payroll for 18 months, someone who was supposed to have retired – while senior staff of PHCN lamented their stagnation at one grade level for years because of “no vacancy.”

We have no intention of engaging Joe Ajaero in a street fight which he clearly relishes. It is laughable that Ajaero would suggest that majority of the officers affected by government’s retirement have nothing to do with power generation, transmission and distribution. PHCN’s sole business is power generation, transmission and distribution; any staff working for the company is engaged in any of the three, either as a core or as a support staff. Only someone like Ajaero would display this sort of ignorance about an organisation whose members he serves! It exposes why Ajaero has so far not allowed the Union members to see that the privatisation of the public power supply organisation is for the good of everyone – the 160million Nigerians and the 30,000+ workers of the PHCN successor companies. It also exposes why Ajaero is unable to see that privatisation is akin to baking a bigger cake that would help this nation overcome its development challenge and at the same time increase the earning power and welfare package of PHCN workers..

Ajaero is misleading power sector workers. Ajaero will not tell the story that the Goodluck Administration has bent over backwards to ensure excellent welfare packages for PHCN staff. He claimed, for instance, that he (Ajaero) was instrumental to the payment of monetisation benefits — which Prof. Nnaji requested and got from government. The healthy Superannuation Fund for PHCN workers, administered by the unions and management, has been depleted, forcing government to activate the Pension Reform Act in the PHCN and equally source for funds to continue to pay PHCN retirees. He will not disclose that it was the Goodluck Administration that approved monetisation benefits denied PHCN workers. He has not thanked the Government for agreeing to pay an unprecedented 50% salary increase for PHCN workers across the board, and for picking up the bill for the first three months. Ajaero ignores the fact that the Government had budgeted and continues to annually budget a jumbo package for retirements, pensions, benefits and severances that may result from the privatisation of the companies.

Government is doing all of this to ensure that no worker suffers a disadvantage arising from the privatisation of public power companies. Rather than acknowledge what government has done, Ajaero and his union cohorts have stood solidly against the privatisation of the power sector, thereby putting the interest of some 30,000+ Nigerians against the economic interest of Nigeria, and against the comfort of 160 million people. This attitude has, has among other tragedies, led to the direct closure of industries and the displacement of millions of Nigerians from work, just to satisfy 30,000+ workers who see the PHCN as their birthright – after begging government to employ them in the same organisation!

At the Lagos meeting between the Unions and the Ministry of Power officials, one of the agreements reached was that no party should thenceforth go to the press to disparage and discredit the other. The Minister promptly issued a gag order on his lieutenants not to say or do anything that would put the Union in bad light. It beggars belief that Ajaero would launch out less than a week after this meeting to disparage, malign, and castigate Prof. Nnaji whose only crime is that he accepted to serve the nation in order to implement the law of the land that was made long before he decided to leave his United States base to settle and do a meaningfully work for Nigeria as a private investor in the same sector.