Tyranny Or Slavery; As UNIMEDTH Issue Query To Staff Over Strike Action

“There’s no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” – Baron de Montesquieu In what looks like a shameful and despotic show of tyrannical force meant to subjugate people into thralldom, fear and insolvency, the management of the University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital issued query letter to its newly recruited nursing officers on the 2nd of January, 2020. This was in response to the strike action embarked upon on the 22nd till 28th of December, 2019 by the nursing officers to protest the over 6 month salary the hospital owes it before they balked and paid a paltry 2 months arrears. It is against every known equality and fairness principle and most especially, the international Labour Organization convention on wages and most particularly, the Treaty of Versailles for the wages of a worker to be owed for 183 days without recourse to pay them. 183 whole days! This is nothing but sheer wickedness, heartlessness, and tyrannical for the wages of people to be owed without immediate plan to salvage the situation or at least pacify the nursing officers and bring a succor to their souls. Wages are one of the means of combating poverty in a world with widening inequality and most especially a country like Nigeria with reduction in purchasing power. How then will these nurses survive economically if they are not being paid their entitlements? I guess the message being sent across by the management is that the nursing officers can go cap in hand begging to survive while they turn a “I don’t give a damn” attitude towards it. The façade called query jokingly asserts that they absconded from duty. Isn’t it funny how low our intellectuals can go just to exert power over people they see as “down below”?! What these nursing officers should have done should have been mass resignation and call the bluff of the “abscondment management” and see who gets to take up a job with no hope of being paid. In the present economic condition of the country when the purchasing power of the average Nigerian has been ridiculously reduced, it is expected that the management would at least use its thinking cap to assuage the plight of these nurses and not add insult to injury by trying to beat and cow them into fear, submission and servitude. We hereby call on relevant stakeholders to prevail on the management of the University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital to pay all outstanding salary of these nursing officers, stop the disgusting and pathetic show of force and provide a good working condition for them for optimum productivity and maximum health service delivery to the state and country at large. We assert at this time, that the world is watching, posterity is lurking around to put the names and deeds of all in its history book. You either be on the path of darkness or light of history and when discussing the history of workers’ welfare in UNIMEDTH, the present management team would either be an Adolf Hitler, Joseph Staliin or Napoleon Bonaparte in history or be on the side of good conscience judgement. Time will tell, the world is really watching. – From a Concerned Nigerian