By Lanre Ogundipe The news about the “Presidential Award” to the highest echelons of the military dropped like a bombshell. I was awestruck by the outlandish retirement packages approved for military officers by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, penultimate week. What a provocative and wasteful gesture! Another slap in the face of the longsuffering, ever-rugged Nigerians, sucked in by a docile and mentally conquered populace? They say silence means consent.
I am more disturbed by the labour movement’s silence and its failure to promptly take the government to the laundry. I do not want to subscribe to the idea that the movement needs an eternity to study the award document before making a pronouncement, for fear of being labelled an overzealous or overreactive bunch of labour group. I stand to be enlightened by comrades in the NLC on the reason for their nonchalant attitude to this highly egregious action.
It would not be surprising if the NLC and its affiliates and allies are complicit in the wicked discriminatory treatment of Nigerians and the civil workforce of the nation. It stands reason on its head that a country whose “rulers” are lamenting that a meagre N70,000 monthly salary for the least-paid worker in Nigeria is beyond their pay power could indulge in a money rain on a single section of the national workforce, agreed that the military plays a critical role in securing the country, at a time the country’s economy is on a lifeline; it is hugely disconcerting! .