For those of us, I mean the intellectuals from Bayelsa State, who know the antecedents of President Goodluck Jonathan from A-Z, we are simply stupefied by the seemingly plotless, shapeless and undignifying drama staged around the N18,000 minimum wage.

In fact, the ferment deliberately built around the new national minimum wage has created spacious room for circumspection about the sincerity of President Jonathan as the leader of Africa’s most populous nation.

Let us first of all disabuse our minds of the gospel that the President is dancing to the tune of the Governors’ Forum which is not favourably disposed to the new pay regime for public sector workers in Nigeria!

However, when it is carefully considered that Jonathan is one man we hitherto placed a lot of store on and worked assiduously for, for him to become President through the ballot, in view of his achievements as governor for just 17 months in Bayelsa State, one is saddened by the recent turn of events in the Presidency.

Let me recall here that President Jonathan it was who approved the N2,500 medical allowance for civil servants in Bayelsa State and through that approval, ended a three-year-long belligerence between the NLC and the TUC on the one hand, and the Alamieyeseigha-led administration on the other in Bayelsa State. Jonathan also took the bull by the horns to offset the arrears arising from the approval, which amounted to N90,000 for every civil servant in the state.

Prior to his assumption of office as governor of Bayelsa State on December 12, 2005, primary school teachers had been on an indefinite strike for almost six months, to protest against non-implementation of promotions and the non-payment of salary arrears. It took Jonathan just one month to pay off all the teachers’ entitlements and the chalkboard fraternity had no cause again to continue with their seven-month old strike, having been handed all their demands.

It is also on record that the Jonathan administration in Bayelsa marked the heydays of the civil service in that state. Apart from prompt payment of salaries, over-heads and end-of-year packages to workers, that administration also organised special training programmes for teachers in public schools and paid worthwhile allowances to the teachers.

This is why Jonathan was taken for a labour-friendly President by everyone who was conversant with his strides in labour matters in Bayelsa State. But so far, his actions and utterances since this issue began don’t portray him and his so-called technocrats as being labour-friendly. Not a few are appalled at the President’s sudden change in attitude, especially in this contentious matter. If we must speak the honest, unadulterated truth, the Jonathan Presidency has not espoused him in the last two months in a very positive light, as a honest and sincere leader Nigerians can trust and repose reasonable confidence in.

I believe strongly the Jonathan administration has won more enemies than friends through its maladroit handling of the minimum wage issue. First, why did the President signed the National Minimum Wage Act if he knew that there was no provision for that in the 2011 Appropriation of the Federal Government? Such sloppiness has no room in statecraft. And this is one issue that marinated between the two-chambered National Assembly and the Presidency for a larger part of 2010, in an endless buck-passing game that made labour patience-weary. Now that the bill has been appropriately passed into law, nobody can therefore deign or feign any ignorance, because doing so would amount to the height of irresponsibility in public office. Two, the National Minimum Wage Act is now a law and ought not to be subjected to marathon debates or negotiations. Where were the Federal Government and the Nigerian Governor’s Forum when the bill was before the National Assembly? Did the Federal Government deliberated or negotiated with Nigerians before it started paying N16 million to each of the 109 senators we have in this country every month? How many N18,000s are in one N16million? Does the Federal Government care that what Nigeria spends in one month to maintain one senator is what its neighbour, Ghana uses in paying a senator for four years?

Having said that, I equally find it outrightly unacceptable, in fact, illegal, for the Federal Government to even be making contemplation to defer the implementation of the new minimum wage till January 2012; whereas there is no such provision in the Act.

Equally unacceptable is government’s shifting-position that the new salary scale is not meant for all categories of civil servants. It sounds not only jejune and vacuous but illogical for a top government team to voice that the N18,000 minimum wage is for only officers on levels one to six; further down-scaled to officers on levels one to three only.

I think the Labour Minister ought to be relieved of his appointment immediately because he seems not to realise what and where he is leading the nation. He certainly must be the one misleading Mr. President in this potentially explosive matter. Moreover, labour matters begin and end with Wogu’s portfolio as Federal Minister of Labour, and he must accept responsibility for any ‘trouble’ he eventually creates for his boss.

It is a pity that President Jonathan is starting his four-year presidency on such a very wrong note and I dare say this is a bad omen for Nigeria; it is a presentiment to decipher what lies ahead. Mr. President, I sincerely love you as do many Nigerians. Please, unconditionally pay the new salary to the Nigerian workers.

These greedy, idea-depleted, “Okrika-wake-up” politicians you have around you want to destroy your Presidency. Sustain the goodwill you enjoy from Nigerians by paying this new salary. This is the only way Nigerians can continue to trust you as their own leader because trust is the only thing that keeps social relations in right alignment. This is no laughing matter!

Mr. DENNIS ALEMU wrote from Yenagoa via [email protected]