IT is obvious that our governments think governance is theatrics. The ceaseless disputations over payment of the minimum wage show a set of people who think more of their offices, their comfort than what would benefit others.

What is a minimum wage of N18, 000? What can it buy? How would it improve the welfare of workers? These are issues that would have been of concern to our governments rather than the long meetings over if governments can pay. When did the governments realise that they cannot pay?

It appears that governments did not want to pay. They waited as the law was made, knowing it was politically inexpedient to tell labour they would not pay. Elections were coming and winning the elections was more important than obeying a law the National Assembly duly made and the President appended his signature. Even the President says he cannot pay.

Why has none of the governments that say it cannot pay gone to court to make a case against this bad law? Why are government wasting everyone’s time, putting the country on edge over a labour unrest? Must we go through these rigmaroles before obeying our own law?

Last November, labour threatened a strike when the dispute narrowed down to a difference of N1, 000. The strike was called off hours before it was due. Governments started a roll coaster of promises on the law.

The Minimum Wage Act is a law. Nobody negotiates the law – you obey it. Anyone who is in default of the law commits an offence. Governments that refuse to implement the law will be in breach of the oath to obey the Constitution. Laws are not obeyed when they are convenient.

Anyone who accepts a wage below the minimum is equally in breach of the law. Governments can scale through the scale without all the attention they are drawing to themselves. We are wondering what their intention is and when they would stop.

Workers have more worries than the minimum wage. Job losses are on the rise. The ageing ones also have concerns about their retirement benefits in a system that scorns records. In an economy buffeted by vast infrastructural challenges, increasing cost of production and cheaper imports endanger the chances of creating new jobs.

Governments annually promise new investments in public power supply, roads, and railways, seaports which are necessary to make manufacturing more profitable and able to create more jobs that are inadequate. They remain promises.

The growing unemployment among youth, in some instances years after higher education, cannot be addressed without huge manufacturing bases that will start the multiplier effects the economy requires. Governments have these challenges awaiting their attention, but they are more bothered about wrangling over a minimum wage that inflation overtook while the negotiations lingered.

Poor examples from our leaders defeat all the reasons given to press governments’ inability to pay the workers. The affluence that leaders portray while in office, the increase in official budgets that support their high profile lifestyle, sustain the arguments that governments have more resources, they just seem unable to spend them on meaningful projects.

The disruptions minimum wage disputes create deal the economy worse blows than our governments are willing to imagine. Governments can spare us the arguments about the damage the minimum wage would do to the country. They are not making any sense.

We want governments to return to proper governance, generate more revenue which they must use for the improvement of the lives of the people, which we think is governance.