In the Igbo Nation, elders will say “a chuo aja ma ahughi udele, mara na ihe mere na ebe ndi mmuo [if you make an animal sacrifice to the gods, and no vulture shows up, you can conclude that something happened in the land of the spirits]. Indeed, for you to kill an animal and present it at the altar to the gods, and no vulture shows up, afterwards, to eat the animal, you have a black swan – an uncommon occurrence.
Late Wednesday, BBC Radio reported on the strike of electricity workers in Nigeria. That was the first time I knew that electricity sector workers were going to strike or already striking. I mean, how could such a thing be about to happen and the media did not flood the social-sphere with it?
Possibly, people felt that there was no difference whether the workers were working or striking as Nigerians were going to get the same outcome: darkness. But it should not be so: shutting down a national grid should be like a black swan or indifference of vultures to animal sacrifices.
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I am happy the workers have suspended the strike: “The National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) has suspended its nationwide strike for two weeks…The union’s strike on Wednesday left cities and towns across Nigeria in darkness after workers shut down power stations. The workers are complaining about welfare issues.” Now, at least, we can pay them to produce official darkness. And that is a better outcome! Sure, I agree, it is not all their faults.
Blame Nigeria which continues to find electrons to light homes, a problem solved more than a century ago in many places.
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We abuse everything in this country, including unions. Since we are not mature enough to be responsible, I do not think we should be permitting unions, because it will always be abused.
GENCOs and DISCOs are largely private, the only component is the power generation and distribution nexus that is government dominated is TCN, so how on earth did we create a framework where whatever issues the workers of TCN had would be suffered by both GENCOs and DISCOs? We keep creating unworkable businesses here, that is why the sort of funds we need never come.
The same way we abuse democratic governance, we replicate same in both civil service and private businesses, believing that we are smart or harming a particular group. Nothing will ever work well in this manner, because they were never setup to succeed.
Who negotiate these deals, lawyers or industry players? Because when you don’t have a skin in the game, you are only concerned with your commissions and remuneration, so nobody ever asks critical questions, let alone examining the finer details.
We don’t expect the Police or Military to go on strike, no matter the conditions, same should also apply to critical sectors; so to work there, you forget about joining unions.
Pathetic.