By Jide Ajani, Editor, Northern Operations

Pa Hassan Sunmonu smells labour.

Check this out:  President, Public Works, Construction, Technical and General Workers’ Union (August 1974 – December 1977); President, Civil Service Technical Workers’ Union of Nigeria (December 1977 – February 1981); President, Nigeria Labour Congress (February 1978 – February 1984); Director of Industrial Relations, Civil Service Technical Workers’ Union of Nigeria (March 1984 – October 1986);  Secretary-General, Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) (October 1986 till date)
Deputy Presiding Officer, African Union Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) (September 2008 – present); and for effect, Establishment and completion of Kwame Nkrumah Africa Labour College, Accra, Ghana, (December 2010).

Now, shall we call him a LABOURER?

He wouldn’t mind.  Probably, for effective communications with workers, he speaks Yoruba, English, French, Italian and Fante.

Simple by nature, Sunmonu turned 70 last Friday.

In this encounter, he brings to life an uncommon willingness to be calm in the face of seemingly embarrassing questions.

HASSAN SUNMONU

When asked why he is into his sixth tenure (26th year) as Secretary-General of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity, OATUU, when his immediate predecessor spent only 13 years, particularly what that speaks about the syndrome of sitting tight, the old man simply explained the context of his continuing secretary generalship of OATUU and just moved on as if the question was never meant to embarrass him.

His response to the saying that a people deserve the leadership they get was turned on its head by simply responding thus:  “I don’t think that Nigerians deserve the type of leadership we have today because it is the same Nigerian people who followed Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa, who are still here today, but these leaders showed the example and we followed them.

But, when Nigerians began to see a new set of leadership that started to eat with all their 10 fingers and every part of their mouth and their noses, that was how we were brought to this sorry pass.  When they saw people using the resources meant for Nigerians for their own selfish and personal benefit, then the people, too, decided to do things their own way.  The fish, as they say, starts to rot from the head.”

Enjoy Sunmonu at 70.

Excerpts:

You are going to be 70 years old in a couple of days’ time, as a Nigerian, when you look back, what are those feelings that you get?  Are they of nostalgia of a failed nation or of things possibly going to get better?
One of the things that go through my mind is that of sadness of lost and wasted opportunities that we have had as a nation.  I have travelled to all the 54 African countries, including the Sahara, and I have discovered that there is hardly any African country that is as richly- endowed as Nigeria, in human and natural resources,  but most of them are way above Nigeria in terms of development.

What is it that has made it so?

Leadership!  Leadership!!

We have refused to look back and reappraise our sense of values and commitment to this nation. Look at the type of leadership we had in the beginning – those who fought for and got independence for us: they were selfless, they were patriotic, they were committed and they made sacrifices for this nation and they made better use of the human and natural resources at the disposal of Nigeria at that time to help transform the lives of Nigerians for the better.

Just look at the Western Region of that time which is about eight or so states now.  In 1955, when Awolowo started free education, we didn’t have oil, neither did we have gas.  What we had was cocoa, oil palm, cotton, rubber, coal, timber and groundnut in the North, those were all the resources we had but yet, the likes of Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa, were able to mobilise these resources for the benefit of Nigerians.

Awolowo brought radio/television, the first in Africa in 1954 and Awolowo even had to manage the finances of Nigeria in the most difficult part of Nigeria’s history – the civil war  – without borrowing a penny to prosecute a 30-month civil war, where we were spending more than $1 million a day.  So, what has happened? These people gave their best with the resources at their disposal.

So, what has happened to successive leaders who had more opportunities and vast resources at their disposal from oil and gas?

Conversely, what would you then think of the saying that a people deserves the leadership it gets?  Would you say Nigerians represent that lot?

I don’t think that Nigerians deserve the type of leadership we have today because it is the same Nigerian people who followed Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello and Tafawa Balewa who are still here today, but these leaders showed the example and we followed them.

But, when Nigerians began to see a new set of leadership that started to eat with all their 10 fingers and every part of their mouth and their noses, that was how we were brought to this sorry pass.  When they saw people using the resources meant for Nigerians for their own selfish and personal benefit, then the people, too, decided to do things their own way.  The fish, as they say, starts to rot from the head.

The agitation for the first national minimum wage was brought about by your leadership of NLC.  The story started on a funny note occasioned by the confrontation between you and members of the National Assembly…

(cuts in) This is how the story unfolded. When I was elected president of NLC, the national executive of NLC met and fixed my salary and pegged it at N15,000 per annum because the job was  full-time and I asked for leave of absence without pay from the Ministry of Works where I was a Senior Technical Officer.

I was invited to the National Assembly at Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos, and the legislators were asking me why my salary should be N15,000 and I responded that I did not fix my salary.
But, there was this Senator Jaja Wachukwu who…

Yes, the late Senator Jaja Wachukwu got up and said ‘look, Sunmonu, I represent Aba/Ngwa, so, why must you be given so much money when the work of a senator was much more?’

I told him ‘no, senator you are wrong; because you are only responsible for Aba/Ngwa senatorial constituency but I am responsible for the whole Nigeria, the workers all over.’

What was his basis for the comparison?

I didn’t know. But, it was because they were trying to fix their own salaries having just come in as civilians and were trying to use the salaries of those in the private sector with a view to fixing their own salaries because they saw themselves as being much more important than other Nigerians.

This was in 1979 and they wanted to use salaries of others to benchmark their own because they didn’t see themselves as servants of Nigerians but as superior beings so they wanted to earn more. The following day, the papers feasted on the story. That was the beginning.

But, they still went ahead to fix bumper salaries and emoluments for themselves.

Yes! They still did and things were already getting out of hand for workers because of increase in prices of things. So, the national executive of NLC met and agreed that we needed to ask for a national minimum wage below which no Nigerian worker would be paid.

What figure was NLC asking for?

Just N300!

Per month?

Yes!  Per month!  And, they started complaining that the money was not available.
Just N300, which was not even up to dog allowance for senators and co.

It led to the major strike embarked upon by my leadership of NLC between May 11 and May 12, 1981.
So, how was the matter resolved?

I was invited by President Shehu Shagari to come for dialogue and I did and we negotiated. But I insisted that until we started negotiation and sign an agreement, I wouldn’t be able to go back to Nigerian workers to say they should go back to work. If I do that I would be a traitor.

We also insisted that the negotiations must be at the highest level, led by then Vice-President, Dr. Alex Ekwueme; the Senate President, Dr. Joseph Wayas; the Speaker, Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, this was because whatever we agreed on would require legislation and we negotiated and signed an agreement and the spirit of give-and-take prevailed. So, we arrived at N150 per month which would also include transport and housing allowance and it was the first time we had a national minimum wage by law.

The workers became happy when they saw me with the agreement on television.

The mechanism for embarking on a strike- one which would be very effective – as employed in those days and the ones in use today appear not to be the same…

There is basically no difference because no NLC leader can call a strike without the national executive of NLC.  In NLC, we operate collectively.  We do things collegially and the most democratic bodies are the trade unions.

I make the observation from the point of view of success.  Strikes these days appear to be two-a-penny and, at the end of the day, the objectives for which they have been embarked upon are hardly achieved. So, what would you say has gone wrong now?

First and foremost, I think we do not make use of the mechanism of dialogue because a strike action is like a war.  You as a general do not bring your best weapon forward first.

It goes both ways – the union leader and the employer. A strike is the last weapon a trade union has when other avenues fail.

It is important to understand that on both sides, strikes disrupt a lot of things.  It also makes an employer or a country to lose revenue, so, it is that realisation that makes it necessary for both sides to dialogue on the issues because even when people fight wars, they come back to negotiate the terms of bringing the war to an end. So, we should make full use of dialogue.

So, which strike action is most effective?

The strike action that is most effective is that which is massive, total and short.  A strike should not last more than two to five days.
But, what if the other party refuses to shift?

The strike has to be massive, total and short and you will achieve results because when it becomes too long, then people begin to get used to it.

Which people?  The government?

Everybody!  Even the people who are supposed to feel the impact become used to it and the same for the government, too. (laughter)  But, when it is massive, total but short, you will achieve so much.
Let us look at the role of labour in politics.

First and foremost, every nation has its own history and every trade union has its. In deciding what role labour should play, you have to put in context the history of the country. Let me tell you, the history of Nigeria’s independence struggle cannot be complete without mentioning the key role the Nigerian Trade Union Movement played.

And, I challenge any Nigerian, politician or historian to deny this. When the fledgling national political parties were being formed, they had no money – I am not saying it was the money of the trade union movement that was used – but we had the spread and we had the mobilisation abilities to get the people out.  Recall the battle over the COLA – Cost Of Living Allowance – which our great leader, Pa Michael Imodu, fought for (the 45-day strike after the Second World War) as leader of the trade union movement.

It was denied and he led the strike led by the railway until they won that fight. That, I want to assure you is the trigger for Nigeria’s independence struggle.  You can also add the coal miners’ strike in 1949 when coal miners were shot by the colonial police. These were the triggers. And, when the late Hubert Macaulay was going round the country mobilising against colonial rule, Pa Imodu was always with him on that tour to ask the British to leave.

So, our nationalists of that time used the trade unions to rattle the colonialists.  We did our best.
Your role in OATUU is about 24 years now, but the man you succeeded and which almost split the organisation permanently was there for 13 years, how come and how was the politics of your emergence?

I was elected on October 25, 1986.  Unlike NLC, there is no term limit in OATUU – NLC was just three years when we started and I was re-elected in 1981 to 1984, though our colleagues wanted to amend the constitution, but I said it was better we left it like that but after that it became a four-year tenure.

I was called upon by NLC to contest for the secretary generalship of OATUU.  I have been re-elected six times now.

I am reliably informed that there was high-wire politics leading up to your emergence, now we’re talking about politics in labour…

There is nowhere there is no politics.

The background and the circumstances that led to that are as follows:  The founding secretary general was Denis Akumu, from Kenya. In the founding constitution, there was a clause 8 which states that no affiliate of OATUU must be an affiliate of another international organisation; there was another provision about the payment of dues as a condition for seeking membership of the executive committee of OATUU; there was also another condition that there must be no multiplicity of trade unions in that country.

It was found out that the same countries were being elected into the executive committee of OATUU every time and others who were paying their dues were never on the exco and people started agitating that there must be representation with payment.

We had the fourth congress here in Lagos in January 1985, that congress split OATUU into two – those who wanted a change and those who wanted the status quo to continue. It lasted for almost 18 months. We also had an extra- ordinary congress in Accra, Ghana, in early 1986 and the split continued. We wanted a change in the constitution that the major criteria must be about paying dues.  The Organisation of African Unity, (OAU) set up a committee of five to mediate.

Interestingly, the solution that was found was proposed by a Nigerian, Yahaya Hashim, and we called it the Hashim Formula which led to the solution – that, for election, we should use full payment by members and that attracts three votes; if it is not affiliated to another body, an extra one vote is added. So, you have a possibility of having four votes if you meet the criteria and that was the formula we used in the election in 1986. The secretariat was also enlarged to accommodate more exco members.

If President Goodluck Jonathan were to call on you for advice on how to tackle unemployment scourge in Nigeria, what are those things you would be telling him?

First, I would become honoured to give my service free.

But, I would ask for a change of direction on our socio-economic policy and ask that we should change to the socio-economic paradigm that we call the basic needs development goals. There are nine basic needs:  Food, if we make sure that food is available and affordable to Nigerians, no matter their living standards. If we pursue that policy, government would be compelled to support agriculture fully through which about 60 per cent of Nigerians are involved.

Millions of decent jobs would be created and wealth would be created for the farmers and government through taxes. Housing is the next; education, health, water, electricity, transport, communications (ICT) and decent work. The eight will produce the ninth. Nigeria survived on agriculture before oil – cocoa, cotton, timber and a few mineral resources like coal and co. In terms of housing, about four or five other jobs are linked to it, so, there would be job creation.

Is it that those in government are blind to these ideas?  When people are outside, people make preachments but when they get in there, they don’t achieve much. What is that thing in government that makes people not to see clearly again?

When we blame the leaders we should also blame the followers.

The question to ask is, why do honest people run away from our own politics? The people you want to serve would be the ones asking what you have for them. If an honest man, with just one building which he has mortgaged, goes about borrowing money for the election, when he is elected, what do you think would be his priority?

He would have to recoup his money first.

We have to reverse the thing because the person who gives you money before you vote for him has bought you and, if you are the one asking for money as a condition for your vote, then, you have sold yourself to him. That means you have lost your moral authority.

In this new dispensation, if we want voters to have moral authority, we should not demand money from them as a condition for voting, so we use our votes very well.

Even when there is not enough money, people would do the homework and the ground work for that honest man.

If such a man is elected, he would develop that area and not fend for his pocket first.
At 70, what would you want to tell Nigerians?

Well, I would want to tell Nigerians that we, as a people, should be grateful to God that it has pleased Him to endow us with human resource – 150 million people which is about 60 per cent of ECOWAS; about 60 per cent of its economy.

Do we have cause to be grateful, of course, yes, because when we reflect we have to be grateful and then as for divine guidance to put this nation on the path of growth and people-empowered democracy and unity and stability.

But first and foremost, we should be grateful that what we have are enough to transform the lives of the present and future generations.