To mitigate the stony resolve of Shylock, the shylock (what else?) of William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” to extract a pound of flesh from debtor Antonio, pretend lawyer Portia, pleaded earnestly, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, it droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven, upon the place beneath.”
Critics of works of literature suggest that the quote makes use of a few literary devices to ram home its message: Allusion to Christian idea of salvation; irony, in a court of law where you do not normally expect mercy; and metaphor, using mercy in the sense of an endless rain.
You may have also seen the video portraying the story of a possibly mythical justice of New York City judiciary, a story that may have been invented, but which serves the purpose of this intervention. He found a grandmother guilty of stealing foodstuffs, and fined her according to the law.
But he turned around to encourage everyone in the court, including the bailiff, police officers, other accused, those who only came to watch court proceedings, and himself, to contribute to paying the fine, so that the old woman would not have to go to jail for stealing food to feed her grandchildren, whose mother was ill, and their father was out of job.
If you have viewed the video, you should wonder why the Federal Government withheld the March 2020 salaries (and probably those of April that will soon be due) of university lecturers who have refused to sign up for its Integrated Payroll and Personnel System.
The Minister for Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed that 55 per cent of the lecturers have already signed up. Stated benefits of the IPPIS are: accurate and reliable personnel information, reduction or elimination of corruption and sharp practices, and facilitation of scientific and accurate budgeting and forecasting.
The concern about some university lecturers’ withheld salaries follows COVID-19 pandemic that has engulfed the entire world; lockdown imposed by some state governments and the Federal Government; and the Federal Ministry of Education’s COVID-19-inspired order that all federal universities should shut down.
Some university lecturers, who do not want to be quoted, called to plead that during this lockdown, their salaries should be paid, to enable them take care of their families, now that they cannot go out of their homes to moonlight at some temporary jobs.
One hopes that somebody in government convinces the President and the schedule officers to remember the constitutional provision that makes security and welfare of Nigerian citizens the Job Number One of government, though the Academic Staff Union of Universities compounded it by now going on strike.
Please note that this is not an attempt to weigh in on the side of either the government or the ASUU on the IPPIS issue. It’s not about the merit, or demerit, of the IPPIS. That will be a story for another day.
But considering the human angle to the plight of the lecturers in this COVID-19 lockdown, it would be wicked if the government gives no thought to the families of the lecturers, however recalcitrant or pig-headed government may think the lecturers are.
Just think of families having no access to food, toiletries, and medication if they ever need it, only because their breadwinners were not paid, whereas government is giving cash to even the unaccounted unemployed. Add that to the sloppy, inefficient, and ineffective logistics of distributing foodstuffs to households.
The resultant famine and unhygienic environment could lead to problems that no one intended or envisaged. If this happens, epidemic would have met with pandemic to afflict all Nigerians, including the state actors.
The issues between the Federal Government and ASUU are: The Federal Government introduced IPPIS to pay the salaries and wages into the bank accounts of all federal civil and public servants after deduction of statutory taxes, housing and other loans, health insurance, union and cooperatives dues, in line with the Treasury Single Account policy that harmonises all government incomes and expenditures.
When presenting the 2020 Budget proposals to the joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives last year, the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) had said, “We shall sustain our efforts in managing personnel costs (euphemism for ‘ghost’ workers). Accordingly, I have directed the stoppage of the salary of any Federal Government staff that is not captured on the IPPIS platform by the end of October 2019.”
ASUU, led by Prof Bíódún Ògúnyemí, counters with the view that the enforcement of the IPPIS on university lecturers is an infringement on the jealously guarded university autonomy, which is loosely regarded as academic and administrative freedom.
Prof Ògúnyemí argues thus: “The introduction of the IPPIS is not backed by law. The (ASUU) position is that there are legal provisions, and negotiated agreements, arising from the nature and peculiarities of Nigerian universities, which make the IPPIS unnecessary and inapplicable to universities.” He didn’t enumerate those legal provisions and negotiated agreements.
He concluded: “The proposed forceful enrolment of staff of the universities in the IPPIS would amount to subjecting the universities to the direction and control of (the) Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, with respect to the payment of staff remunerations, salaries, and wages.”
Though this argument is not exactly convincing, it is important for the Federal Government to take a good look at the human interest angle that this face-off is pointing at. One even wonders if Sadiya Umar Farouq, Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, whose mission statement is to “coordinate all humanitarian affairs in Nigeria,” is aware of this development.
She should wade in, to halt the disaster that is waiting to happen, by calling her colleague, the Minister of Education Adamu Adamu, to vacate the battle, “to drop a strain of mercy” on the university lecturers, who seem to irritate him so much.
If Sadiya is looking for Internally Displaced Persons to look after, she got a whole community in the university lecturers, who have nothing to feed their families. Their situation provides the best example of the narrative that the hunger caused by the lockdown will kill more than COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.
It would be a wonderful public relations coup if the Federal Government paid the salaries of the belligerent lecturers, and explained that the gesture was merely humanitarian, and would terminate if the lecturers did not end their “aluta” when the lockdown or COVID-19 pandemic ended, whichever came last.
If one were to reduce this plea to an absurd level, it would be to suggest that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo should resume the embarrassing tour he made before the 2019 presidential election, to disburse TraderMoni and MarketMoni, but this time to his constituency, the lecturers in the university system. And the loan should be repayable when able.
Perhaps, the best way to explain the looming problem is to ask the state actors to imagine how well-organised it would be if university lecturers joined the “#OneMillionDollarBoys” to raid the homes of people with too much money. Recall that it was middle class Bolsheviks that led “the lumpen proletariat,” to overthrow the Tsar and the Russian nobility.
The moral here is that you don’t have to win every battle in order to win a war.
Twitter @lekansote
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