This voluntary principle was also evident at the level of central trade unionism, where multiple labour centres always existed since mid-1940s. Trade unions and their members met and, without obtaining the permission of any one, formed their central labour organisations and registered themselves with the Registrar of Trade Unions in the Ministry of Labour. In turn, respective federal and regional governments were free to recognise whichever central labour organisation they liked, thus except for short spells of 1944-45, 1948-1951, 1954-1956, 1959-1960, 1962 and December 1975, when one central labour organisation was voluntarily created by workers themselves, the norm was to have one officially recognised central body coexisting with two or three others. And almost without fail, the central body recognised by the government had a minority of trade unions affiliated to it.

Anyway, as at 1974, the four central labour organisations were the Wahab Goodluck-led Nigerian Trade Union Congress (NTUC), the Michael Imoudu-led Labour Unity Front (LUF), the Ramos -led Nigerian Workers Council (NWC), and the Kaltungo/Odeyemi-led United Labour Congress of Nigeria (ULCN) which enjoyed government's recognition and patronage. The fifth, Ibrahim Nock-led Northern Federation of Labour (NLF), had become moribund. For many reasons and several developments which need not concern us here, including pressure from workers themselves, labour leaders initiated a move to form one central labour organisation. By April 1974, all the four central labour centres had dissolved themselves, and returned their respective certificate of registration to the Registrar of Trade Unions and announced the formation of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and fixed its inaugural conference for 18 December 1975. The NLC was thus a voluntary merger of the four centres.

As the day drew closer, the prospect of one central labour organisation formed by workers and their leaders on their own steam appeared too threatening to the military regime which now actively sought to either influence the process or abort it altogether if that attempt proved unsuccessful. First, Paschal Bafyau and his friends in the defunct ULCN formed the Progressive Front for the Labour Movement, while Hudson Momodu and his cronies from the NTUC formed the Committee of Trade Unions in Defence of Trade Union Rights to protest the inauguration of the NLC. Both organisations, in well co-ordinated and orchestrated moves, inundated the Federal Ministry of Labour with petitions alleging, among others, �foreign interventionŒ in the labour movement and that positions in the NLC had been 'slated' and thus the impending elections at the inauguration were a farce. The Bafyau's outfit issued a press release on 15 December calling for an investigation of the affairs of the four defunct central labour organisations and the assets of their leaders. The regime, on its own part, on the night of 17 December got police to occupy the offices of the four merging centres, removed documents and files and arrested about 100 trade unionists, including all top labour leaders, but released them soon afterwards.

The NLC was duly inaugurated amidst fanfare, and Wahab Goodluck and Chief Odeyemi emerged president and general secretary respectively. However, another general, Major General Adefope, the Commissioner for Labour, on the same day at a press conference announced that the military regime would proscribe certain international labour organisations 'so as to remove completely ideological or external influences which have plagued Nigerian trade union unity for more than a quarter of a century." And this was followed, the next day, by the new President of the new NLC, Wahab Goodluck, along with Dr Tunji Otegbeye and Kunle Oyero, being arraigned before a Lagos magistrate's court on charges of transacting activities of a banned political party and remanded in custody until 30 January 1976. The case was later thrown out for want of evidence, and one needed no crystal glass or babalawo's cowries to see that the military regime was trying to intimidate the new leadership of the NLC for reasons not unconnected with its failure to impose a leadership, and the fact that Wahab Goodluck was the President of the NTUC, a labour centre clearly not liked by it and by western countries on account of its links with the communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and the Dr Otegbeye-led Socialists Workers and Farmers Party of Nigeria.

At a subsequent post-inaugural press conference, Major General Adefope specifically mentioned the banned international labour organisations, excluding only the ILO and the Organisation of Africa Trade Union Unity (OATUU) and the International Trade Secretariats (ITSs); announced a new policy of 'limited intervention' and of 'guided democracy' in trade union matters, and that a national institute for labour studies was to be established, and trade unions would be reorganised along industrial lines to accelerate the formation of bigger and more viable amalgamations and federations of trade unions. He ended with the institution of a judicial tribunal to investigate the former four central bodies, their assets and liabilities, which indirectly meant the new NLC. When established in March 1976, the tribunal became known as the Adebiyi Tribunal because it was headed by Mr Justice Adebiyi of the Lagos High Court, while a committee headed by a Michael Abiodun, a former senior labour officer and now tagged "Administrator of Trade Union Affairs", was saddled with the responsibility of appointing union delegates to seminars and conferences abroad, drawing up a code of conduct for trade unionists, supervising the restructuring of the nearly a thousand trade unions into industrial unions and drawing up a model constitution for the projected industrial unions.
 

But before both the Adebiyi Tribunal and Abiodun Committee completed their respective tasks early February 1978, General Gowon had been overthrown, his successor, General Murtala, killed in a botched coup, and two other generals, General Obasanjo and General Shehu Yar'Adua had emerged to head the new military regime. The Obasanjo regime in its White Paper accepting most of the recommendations of the Adebiyi Tribunal, while finding none of the major labour leaders guilty of corruption, still managed to decree that eleven of them be banned for life from trade union activities, and all assets of the four central labour centres be confiscated by the military government. The Abiodun Committee, which benefited enormously from the inputs of respective labour leaders, created some seventy unions, forty-three so-called industrial unions for junior staff, eighteen senior staff associations, and nine employers' organisations.
 

The NLC was re-inaugurated on 28 February 1978 amidst fanfare, at which Hassan Sunmonu and Dangiwa were elected president and general secretary respectively. General Shehu Yar'Adua, who represented the military regime at the re-inauguration of the NLC, said that the regime would provide start-up funds and financial support generally in the form that would not prejudice the independence of the NLC, and warned against intransigence, violence and blackmail in the conduct of trade disputes.
 

The Trade Union (Amendment) Decree No 22 of 1978 which gave statutory backing to these reforms, not only recognised the NLC as the only central labour organisation in the country, the industrial unions were also mentioned by name as the only industrial unions and forced to affiliate to the NLC, while the senior staff associations were statute-barred from doing so. The Decree also provided for compulsory recognition of trade unions by employers and introduced compulsory check-off system for deriving union dues, while requiring industrial unions to pay ten per cent of their income as affiliation dues to the NLC. In all, constitutions were imposed on the NLC and the industrial unions.
 

Within one year, the military regime had changed its mind on the industrial union of Customs and Immigration workers and deregistered them, thereby reducing the number of industrial unions to forty-one in 1978. While the NLC and the industrial unions long sought a further restructuring on account of jurisdictional problems thrown up by the new union structure and established committees for such a purpose, it was General Abacha's regime that decisively co-ordinated these pressures and demands to enable a new structure of 29 industrial unions to emerge. It also issued two anti-union decrees, one proscribing international affiliation by unions and the NLC, the other making a distinction between 'card-carrying' and 'non-card-carrying' members all in an effort to prevent Adams Oshiomhole and other trade union leaders from being eligible to stand elections. Before then, General Babangida's regime, in its attempts to punish the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the NLC and the two unions in the oil and gas sector, NUPENG and PENGASSAN, amended the Trade Union Decree to prevent senior staff associations from utilising compulsory check-off system for deriving their membership dues, while dissolving their national executive committees and throwing some of their leaders into detention. It was the policy of limited intervention and guided democracy at work!

The democratic dispensation since 1999 has encouraged many to demand a review of many draconian laws in the statute books, including a review of the country's constitution itself. Evident from the narration is that decrees have had a more punitive character than being informed by the wish to improve upon relations in industry on which productivity and continuous production so depended. As for labour law, more concrete steps have been taken since 1999 with organised private sector, organised labour and government forming a tripartite technical committee, assisted by the ILO's Nigerian Declaration Project, that has been reviewing it to make recommendations that should form the basis for a comprehensive reform of law and of practices and processes in the industrial relations system. Even before this tripartite committee is done, comes President Obasanjo's proposed Trade Union (Amendment) Act of 2003.

In critically examining the proposed amendments, it is important that we pull ourselves away from largely unproductive and unilluminating posturing of filing either behind the President or organised labour as represented by the NLC. The President has repeatedly said that he is committed to complying with the Conventions of the ILO that govern trade union matters and industrial relations, and Nigeria having ratified them since 1960, he must be commended for his courageous move at extolling and cementing principles that are germane to democratic industrial existence. We shall examine the underlying principles of the Conventions this government is now respecting, unlike the Abacha and other military regimes, and place the proposed provisions of the projected amendments side by side with them, and conclusions can then be drawn purely on these grounds.
 

The voluntary principle is important to and for the workings of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), an organ of the United Nations based in Geneva, that drew, and still draws, its delegates from government, private employer and workers representatives of its member-countries. The deliberations of the ILO Conference, freely and voluntarily involving all the parties, become Conventions that deal with most facets of work and labour, which ratifying member-countries know to be binding and are required to amend their national labour law to reflect. However, unlike the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation Treaty that has the International Atomic Energy Agency to continually monitor and maintain surveillance and bilateral and multi-lateral sanctions can be imposed on erring signatories, the ILO is limited to moral suasion and exposure of offending member-countries in getting them to meet their obligations. Fortunately, however, unlike the nuclear situation that a signatory can for a while evade by hiding its nuclear armament programme, existing practices in industry and labour laws regulating them proclaim loudly the degree of compliance ¤ especially as workers and employers and their organisations react to their circumstances.
 

Of all the conventions, Convention 87 which covers the freedom of association and protection of the right to organise, and Convention 98 on the right to organise and collective bargaining, both ratified by Nigeria, are most relevant to our purpose. The proposed amendments, we have been told, are to uphold the voluntary principle in a) formation of trade unions; b) membership of trade unions; c) payment of membership dues; d) formation of trade union federations; e) formation of central labour organisations; f) collective bargaining, and g) strike actions. We now take a closer look.
 

On the formation and membership of trade unions, the voluntary principle as enshrined in Convention 87 and intended by the proposed Section 12 means that the Nigerian worker should enjoy the right to join and form a union of his/her choice. This section ought then be further amended to remove the government-imposed separation of industrial unions from senior staff associations. Workers have been forced into these unions against their wishes. A further implication of this is that all the 29 industrial unions and existing senior staff associations should be removed from the law as the boundaries of voluntarily formed unions are yet to be determined by the workers who would form them. Even after the new unions have been formed, it would amount to industrial disenfranchisement for the unions to be specifically listed as the only unions because developments in industry and economy could lead to the creation of new skills and new work groups that would wish to constitute themselves into unions. A case in point is the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) which, by existing provision of the Act that remains unaffected by President Obasanjo's proposed amendments, is an illegal body on account of not being listed. Also, since membership is voluntary, listing any union by name prevents workers who wish to leave a union to form another from doing so, thereby indirectly compelling them to stay on. The possibility of being able to break away to form another body acts as a deterrent against dictatorial tendencies and works in favour of good governance.
 

Aside from dictatorial tendencies, there appears to be no convincing grounds for denying the right to form trade unions to the police, customs, immigration, and several categories of civil servants in currently labelled 'essential services'. Nigeria has the widest definition of 'essential service' in the world because of its politicisation by successive military regimes which, since the mid-1970s, expected the classification itself to be a sufficient anti-strike medicine instead of more sensible compensation and employment policies. The Abacha regime, for example, extended the label to include all educational institutions in its bid to muzzle ASUU and other protesting teachers. It is not merely a question of these public servants having their own trade unions or associations as elsewhere in the world, but also of their democratic right and the fact that historical evidence indicates the denial of these rights to them by restrictive legislation, 'in the public interest', merely served to render most of the essential services unattractive places to work in for a majority of workers, their epileptic services working very much against public interest the legislation was supposed to be protecting, and their being mostly corruptly mismanaged in an authoritarian environment contributing in no small way to our huge external debts and clamour for privatisation. Thus, aside from the military (and intelligence agencies), which is not a voluntary institution, the freedom of association and right to organise and collective bargain should be enjoyed by all public servants. It is either self-deception or misplaced expectations that politicians can look after the work interests of public servants better than their own voluntary unions or associations. Chronic crises dominating public sector industrial relations in the country are eloquent testimony.
 

A related issue is the minimum number of persons required to form a trade union. The 1938 Trade Union Ordinance stipulated five persons, the figure currently standing at fifty. With an overwhelming majority of businesses employing less than fifty workers in the country, a majority of workers are officially denied the right of freedom of association, right to organise and collective bargain. Some observers argued in the past that the figure of five was too permissive, too low, but one has also pointed out that there was no union with only five members. Clearly, the minimum number of fifty should not be retained in the amended law.
 

Going with the formation of a union is the question of its recognition, and in this connection the powers of the Minister of Employment, Labour & Productivity and Registrar of Trade Unions would need to be reviewed. Both officers have powers to cancel registration of any union. As it is, the refusal of the Registrar to register a union prevents it from functioning as such. In reality, therefore, the Registrar, taking instructions from the Minister, decides on which union should exist irrespective of the wishes of its members and employers who have recognised them. The office of the Registrar of Trade Unions under the new law should function like the Corporate Affairs Commission that merely keeps records of business names, ensures that no duplication of names occurs, etc.
 

On membership dues, the proposed Section 16A, not only reinforces the control-function of registration and recognition, also states that an employer 'may, subject to the express consent of a worker who is eligible and willing to be a member of any trade union, make deductions from the wages of such worker for the purposes of paying contributions to the trade union so registered.' Also, 'provided that compliance with the provisions of this section shall be subject to the insertion of a "no strike' clause in the relevant collective bargaining agreement between the workers and their employers.' The latter clause violates many ILO Conventions, especially Convention 98 on the right to organise and collective bargain, including democratic and contractual rights enjoyed by parties to an agreement. First, there is no connection between membership dues and a collective agreement voluntarily negotiated between two parties in industry. Second, the philosophy underlying deregulation and privatisation is the freedom of private parties to own and operate their businesses without undue official interference and when such investors/employers negotiate agreements with workers within their domains, the government is hardly in a position to demand or insist that a "no-strike' clause be inserted in a contract it is not a party to ¤ especially as the interests involved are those of the parties themselves and not the public's. There are many collective agreements in the country where both parties have themselves agreed on inserting a "no strike' clause, and this is what it should be. The government should commence the construction of more jails and police stations and recruit thousands more constables who would have to arrest thousands of workers that will routinely go on strike against the "no strike' clause itself. Third, the said clause makes a mockery of collective bargaining, and puts workers into the negotiation ring with their hands tied behind their backs. Fourth, it represents a poorly veiled attack on the finances of the trade unions by making deductions of union dues conditional upon insertion of the "no strike' clause. Indeed, not only is the "no work no pay' policy being retained for individual union members or workers, for the union a proposed Chapter 7, Section 17(2)(d) prohibits the deduction of dues for the period of strike 'in breach of collective bargaining agreement between workers and the employer.' Fifth, it is an indirect way of banning strikes and criminalizing industrial behaviours and other forms of industrial conflict which employers themselves recognise to be legitimate democratic responses.
 

Regarding the formation of federation of trade unions, the new proposal is that any two or more trade unions irrespective of any differences in their trade, occupation or industry may form a federation, provided that the unions concerned in a secret ballot pass such a resolution by a simple majority and notify the Registrar of Trade Unions not less than thirty days before the date of such a ballot by completing and submitting a prescribed form setting out the resolution to same. The issue here is not whether the conditions are stringent or not. Rather, the voluntary principle precludes the imposition of conditions by external parties. If the argument in support of this clause is the protection of union members from a handful of presumably empire-seeking union leaders or the protection of public interest however defined, it is odd that politicians who have experienced great difficulty forming and managing their own political parties would assume thousands of very alert workers who are sustaining their unions through their hard-earned wages would be railroaded into larger federations. Workers and their trade unions, like other clubs, societies and voluntary organisations in the country, should establish their own rules and write their own constitutions.
 

Of immediate concern to the NLC is the proposed Section 13(3), which says 'the Registrar shall remove from the register the NLC as the only central labour organisation in Nigeria.' For reasons already mentioned, there is indeed no good reason why the NLC or the name of any union should be mentioned in the amended Trade Union Act. The Registrar of Trade Unions can keep his record of existing unions, union federations and central labour organisations for those who wish to know. The most important thing is for the voluntary principle to be applied right across board, and not selectively. For example, it would be up to the affiliates of the central labour organisation to decide on affiliation dues not the Act imposing a maximum of ten per cent of union dues: all clubs and societies fix their own membership dues or subscriptions, not the government. Again, if the official concern is the prevention of exploitation of members through exorbitant dues, it is misdirected because we are here dealing with the bulk of workers who find it difficult to make ends meet, and no union leader can coerce them into paying more than what they are willing to as dues. At any rate, union membership is voluntary.
 

Lastly, the right to strike is not absolute in any country and is often hedged or qualified. However, the proposed mandatory insertion of "no strike' clause in collective agreements is tantamount to prohibiting strikes in those companies or industries where workers and employers have negotiated collective agreements as earlier remarked. But, then, a proposed new Section 33 under Chapter 14 states: ' No trade union or registered federation of trade union, by whatever name called, shall embark on a strike action unless upon a resolution approving the strike action, passed by at least two-thirds majority of delegates representing all the members of the union or federation of trade unions in secret ballot held at a meeting for that purpose.' It would be an interesting scenario if trade unions were to include a clause in their own constitutions requiring two-thirds votes of delegates by secret ballot to call off a strike action.
 

Labour law in Nigeria includes many legislative pieces or Acts, the core ones being the Labour (or Employment) Act, Workmen's Compensation Act, Factories Acts, Trade Disputes Act and the Trade Union Act. Each and every one of these requires major and detailed review, and thus singling out the Trade Union Act for patchy amendment would be a futile exercise. For example, the insertion of the "no strike' clause in collective agreements would have the effect of rendering obsolete both the Industrial Arbitration Panel and the National Industrial Court (two disputes and conflict-regulating institutions central to the Trade Disputes Act) because the criminalisation of strikes and other forms of industrial conflict would make the ordinary law courts very busy indeed and thus disastrous to the parties in industry who have to wait years for cases to be decided. In which case, the only way employers can get work to continue while awaiting court proceedings to conclude is to obtain court injunctions, assuming striking workers comply.
 

From this and our analysis, it is easy to reach the conclusion that the proposed Trade Union (Amendment) Act of 2003 in its present form is ill-suited to the needs of the parties in industry, piece-meal and has not been carefully thought-through. It seems somewhat contradictory, if not counterproductive, to embark on large-scale deregulation of the economy and privatisation of public enterprises and yet pass labour laws that increase government interference in the bilateral and internal affairs of the parties in industry who are supposed to be pulling the economy out of the current mess. The aim should be laws facilitating less adversarial industrial relationships and increased productivity. The technical committee should be allowed to finish its work for labour law reforms to be comprehensive and useful to all.
 

As for the timing of the proposed amendments to the Trade Union Act, I am still struggling to understand it. A government spends billions of naira to construct a stadium and games village and to host an edition of the All-African games, but thinks it prudent to increase the pump prices of refined petroleum products a few days to the occasion, in full knowledge that organised labour's protests could disrupt the games. Now, the government has been spending some more hundreds of millions to host the Commonwealth heads of state meeting, including a possible visit by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, and brings out this bill that would likely provoke equally disruptive protests. I can see the pattern emerging, but sooner than later I certainly shall work my way round to seeing the logic.