George Ehusani on Nigeria's Minimum Wage Debate
Excerpts from Rev Fr George Ehusani. Sermon on Nigeria's Minimum Wage Debate.
Lux Terra Leadership Center Abuja, June 2024.
I have been sick of this controversy over living wage or minimum wage, and I believe that something is seriously wrong with the heads of many of our leaders.How can anyone who earns 200,000 300,000 400,500 thousand, not to talk of people who earn 1 million 2 million how can they go to sleep in good conscience? How can they go to sleep in good conscience and come out to sit down in a boardroom to discuss the sustainability or otherwise of paying 60,000 to the poorest of workers?
I watch people on TV experts, economic experts, corporate executives, government officials who are taking home more than a million and the amount and they are debating 60,000 or over will destroy the economy and is not sustainable. How wicked.
How can we give 60,000 to a poor worker for his poor worker who may have a family of two or three or four for his feeding, for his accommodation, for his house rent for his medical care for his children's school fees? How can we be blind? How can we do that? And we think that God will bless our country?
We think that it is by bringing a new national anthem for God to bless our country. How can you commit this crime against humanity? For me this is a crime against humanity.
Because the poor people who cannot afford to buy Garri, I'm saying poor people who cannot buy Gary, I'm not talking of meat or fish. People are dying because they have no money to cure malaria. How can you go to sleep in good conscience, those of us who belong to the elite? How can we go to sleep with good conscience?
I see this as a new form of apartheid. Nigeria is one of the most unequal societies in the entire world. A society where it's like the Animal Farm, a society where we have conspicuously rich people, people who are living in conspicuous consumption and others who are in deplorable, dehumanizing poverty.
If you have somebody in this country that takes home, 1 million naira, I mean 1 million I'm not talking about 30 million naira 1 million naira in the month and he can open his mouth. I say anyone who earns up to 1 million should keep his or her mouth shut when he hears them debating about paying 60,000 for the poor.
More than 60 years after independence, we are running an apartheid society. This time is not racial apartheid, iis economic apartheid.
We are running an apartheid society of people of conspicuous consumption flying in private jets around at government expense. People who are riding four or 567 SUVs with pilot vehicles chasing the poor out of the road.
You insulted the poor by saying 30,000, and later you say 48,000, and now you say 60,000. Actually you will pay more than 60,000. You come out with 62,000. You insult poor Nigerians.
There is hardly any society I know that is as divided as the Nigerian society and a society that is so divided is just sitting on a keg of gunpowder. I have warned here before that the revenge of the poor is at the corner. The revenge of the poor is at the corner. I am not calling for it, but it will happen as night follows the day.
Because when you reduce people to this dehumanizing level, nature does not allow a situation of islands of affluence amidst a sea of poverty. Nature does not allow it.
Let me warn those in the elites. Let me warn those in the apartheid committee of government. Let me warn that it is in the course of nature that when a predator continues to devour the various resources that the predator needs more for his sustenance, nature will take out the predator in order to have a measure of equilibrium. Nature is about balance, you know.
When a predator continues to devour the various resources that the predator needs more for its sustenance, nature will take out the predator in order to have an equilibrium in order to have a measure of equilibrium. Nature is about balance, you know. All of nature is about balance and human beings are part of nature. And Nigerians are part of nature
If the predator who needs the animals in the kingdom to survive is recklessly devouring the very animals for its own survival, nature will step in and remove the predictor so that there can be balance in the system in the ecosystem.
Let me one that all those who are in government, I hear I have not confirmed that there are people taking home almost 30 million naira in the month and you have the guts and you have the temerity. Your conscience allows you to sit down to discuss about 60,000 Naira for a poor worker for the whole month, and you are the one that has all the opportunities of excess.
You sit down to discuss about 60,000 and come out and say this is not sustainable. How is that 30 million Naira sustainable economy? How is this sustainable that a leader has 100 SUVs going with him to the airport? How is this sustainable? How is it sustainable that leaders merely junket around the world? How is that sustainable?
I say we are committing a crime against humanity. And if we do not repent and retrace our steps immediately Revenge of the poor is at the corner. Do not hold me responsible because while the devastation was on, I did not keep quiet. Do not hold me responsible. Because while the madness was on, I did not sit on the fence. I kept on shouting, that the revenge of the poor is at the corner unless we change our course. And if we do not change our course we will end up where we are headed. And where we are headed is devastation, disruption, violent revolution.
I rest my case.