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INTERVIEW: “Nigerian Media are
doing perfectly well but the greed of media owners won’t let them pay”
- Vice Chair, Lagos Council of the NUJ
Media Rights Monitor’s Joseph Izibili recently engaged Mr. Deji
Elumoye, Vice-Chairman of Lagos State Council of the Nigerian Union of
Journalists (NUJ), who spoke on the backlog of unpaid salaries pervading
media houses in Nigeria, especially in Lagos State, media ownership and
other sundry issues. Excerpts:
We are really disturbed by the trend of salary arrears,
journalists are being owed by their employers in various media houses in
Nigeria. We want to know what the NUJ is doing as a body to arrest the
situation.
Yes, thank you, the NUJ, is very much concerned by the backlog of
salaries being owed our members, specifically, Lagos State Council of
the Nigeria Union of Journalists. From time to time, we discuss the
issue but it got to a head recently, when we had to take a position and
that is about a week or so ago, after the death of our colleague, Mr.
Samuel Famakinwa of Thisday newspapers. As you maybe aware, he
died in Borno State. And in the course of his burial plans the state
council of the NUJ decided, to hold a three-day fasting and prayer for
our members: for those still living so that all this recurring issues of
death of our members should stop. We invited clerics: Muslim and
Christians clerics, to pray for our members and for the repose of the
souls that died. And before this, we had a State Executive Council
(SEC), meeting, comprising of all chairmen and secretaries of all
federating units of the Council which we call Chapel meeting, we took a
decision; and the decision we arrived at, at that meeting, was what
formed the communiqué we read out on the third day of our three-day
fasting and prayer, imploring employers of journalists, media owners,
whether, they have chapels or not, whether we have NUJ members there or
not, we gave them 21 days ultimatum. It is a three page communiqué,
jointly signed by the chairman and the secretary. (turning to the
communiqué, let me quickly read out that part).
“That all media houses, owing our members should with immediate
effect, pay up the arrears of salaries and other entitlements or face
industrial action from the combined bodies of NUJ and Nigeria Labour
Congress (NLC). In this regard, a 21 days ultimatum commencing from
Monday 6th to Monday 27th of August, 2007, is
hereby given to all the media houses in the country, regardless of
whether ‘chapelised’ or not, to pay all outstanding arrears of salaries
and other emoluments. In case of defaults, the list of such media houses
will be published and the union thereafter shall not guarantee
industrial harmony.”
Copies of this three-page communiqué have been sent to media owners,
Chairmen, in places where they have, Managing Directors or Publishers,
we have personally taken it to them.
So, at the expiration of this 21-day ultimatum on 27th of
August, I can assure you that by the time you are here, we will tell you
the next line of action we are taking. We are taking it very very
seriously, in a matter of one week or so; we’ll take the next step.
There is another dangerous trend going on now in one of the
broadcast outfits: when salaries accumulates, the Chairman calls his
staff to a meeting and orders everybody to resign and re-apply, and
fresh negotiations take place and as the case maybe, out of the six or
seven months arrears, he tells them he will pay one or two months, the
rest you forfeit if you are still interested in the work. I don’t know
if you are aware of this?
Yes, we are aware of that. And even when we first got the information,
we tried to get across to the management of the media outfit, and along
the line, the information we got was that there was nothing like that;
and we tried to confront them with evidence that our members can’t be
lying. Even the media house concerned, we have serious members of this
association in their management. And we said we know some of you as
active members of the Union [NUJ], and this kind of thing is happening
in your media establishment and you believe it is the best for our
members? They told us there was nothing like that. We went out of our
way to go as far as Abuja to see the chairman after those at the
management that we met, claimed ignorance of it. When we got to Abuja,
we told him to his face, this is what is happening in your office, we
are aware of the steps you take as regards owing workers' salaries and
that we are coming head-on to fight him. We accosted him at airport; he
looked at us in the face, said how? we said no, we don’t want to know,
we’ve met with your management, thank God, we are able to track you down
in Abuja now, this is exactly what we are going to do, because it is no
longer acceptable to us for you to treat our members like that, if you
are owing, you pay everything outstanding. In the past, you were able to
do this kind of arrangement, whereby you ask them, let me pay you some
and leave some, all those one should stop.
That media house and most others happen to be those that we gave this
21-day ultimatum. So I assure you, from the end of this month [August]
you won’t see anything like that again, because we met all of them in
regards to payment of salaries.
Even, there is a print medium, a magazine for that matter where they owe
heavily in arrears. They are in this category of those owing backlog and
are paying but also asking for a write off of others and there are those
who are not paying at all. I assure you, the war is going to be total,
we are going to make sure the issue of non-payment of salaries becomes a
thing of the past by the end of this month.
Earlier, you said you organized a three day prayer session, as a
result of the death of Samuel Famakinwa, do you have record of
journalists who have died in Lagos recently, and if you do, would you
say their deaths is as a result of the penury journalists are subjected
to?
It is not far from the truth that an average journalists lives in
penury. What an average journalist is being paid is nothing to write
home about. It is not what you can call a living wage, so, you just
discover that, what some media houses pay our members is something
ordinary casual workers in some firms/factory would not even want to
take.
By and large, we discovered that apart from the issues of wages, the
working condition of an average journalist is also nothing to write home
about. Take for instance, you engage somebody, and you know, he leaves
in the outskirts, and you are not making provisions for staff bus and
other working conditions for him. You discovered that some of our
members, they close late, if they close late, how do they get home? Most
of these journalists don’t have private/ official cars, so if you work
on the Island and you are closing after 10pm, after the network news,
how do you find your way from the Island or Apapa to your home on the
outskirt: Iyana-Ipaja, Abule-Egba etc. Most of these media owners are
not bothered, they don’t want to know, they just believe, ‘I have
employed you, you have to come to work.’
There are instances of our members, whose offices are along,
Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, they fall victims of “once chance” you enter
these buses, and after two bus stops, they tell you surrender what you
have with you and they push you down. So they came here injured, and we
have to start assisting them, why not have staff buses for our members,
who close late that can take them home. If you close 9pm, this bus will
take you home, if you close 10pm and above, this other bus will take you
home.
We know of a media establishment that has bought two/three buses, they
have those who close by 4pm, they take them up-to Ikeja bus stop, and
those who close by 9.00pm – 10.00pm they take them home too. Basically,
the working condition of an average journalist is nothing to write home
about. What most employers want to do is get the best out of you,
without thinking about, how you get your stories for them. Some media
houses, don’t even pay [Basic Transport Allowance] BTA, that is
transport claims, to take you round to look for stories, they believe
okay, they have given you the license to go and look for money because
they have employed you, they have given you identity card.
So, part of what could have accounted for those who died might not be
unconnected with the working conditions. Apart from Samuel Famakinwa, we
know of another member of our great union, who was a correspondent in
Anambra State, Mr. Benjamin Akpan, he died few days after Famakinwa’s
death, he was on his way to the cyber café and he slumped. He worked
with one of the print media. We learnt that in his office as at the time
he died, he was being owned about two or three month’s outstanding
salaries. His establishment is among those we are likely to picket by
the end of this month. So, somebody like that who had nothing, first and
foremost had to discharge his duties to his office, not withstanding he
is being owed. He wanted to sit down to send his stories and he slumped
and died.
The former chairman of Thisday editorial board, Godwin Agbroko,
he too died in December. He was attacked. They said its armed robbery,
he was on his way home. Interestingly, I work in the same place with
him, I saw him that very day, he closed around 9.00pm, and said bye,
bye, few days to Christmas, and by Iyana- Isolo Bridge, they shot him at
close range and he died.
Insecurity, when you talk about the employers, you talk about the
society at large too. What are Federal and State governments doing as
regards security of people. How can somebody go to work and coming back
in his own car, he gets killed. The point where Agbroko was killed there
is usually police checkpoint, but on that day, there was none. Our
members who work late and are going back home don’t have anything apart
from their papers and biro. How secure are our members in the places
where they work and their environment?
What can we really be attributed as principal reason for this
problem? Is it that media houses are not doing well? Is it greed?
They are doing perfectly well. I know of an electronic medium where
they make millions of naira per day. I also know a print medium, whose
advert a day, runs into millions of naira a day, and they still owe
backlog of salaries. The problem with the media owners is greed. Some
of them are very selfish, self-centered and are slave drivers. They
believe they have a medium with which they can amass wealth at the
expense of their workers.
They are not even paying a living wage, and the little thing they pay is
not regular. They [media owners] are making money of them: through
adverts, through sponsored programmes, money comes into the pocket of
this various organizations, but they find it difficult to pay our
members, because they believe in themselves, me and me first. That is
why you see some of them who say I have employed you, I have given you a
vista, start making money. As a journalist who works in a medium, you
can move around, talk to people and make your own money, which is
unethical. They are just there, they don’t want to know what is
happening, they don’t pay you a living wage, they make you slave
workers. We still have a situation where an average graduate journalists
is being paid N12, 000.00 (Twelve thousand naira only) [less than
US$100] per month, in a Nigeria of today and it is not regular. These
proprietors make money, junket here and there, and travel overseas at
the expense of the workers. And the workers who are making the money,
you don’t make them comfortable. The little you are paying them you
don’t make it available.
Beyond the campaign for payments of salary arrears, what other
welfare scheme does the Union have for its members?
For welfare, there is what we called Distress Funds. Lagos NUJ has what
is called distress funds, a situation whereby a token is given to a
member who is in distress, say loss of job. So that issues of rent and
maintenance of family are not adversely felt. Apart from that, those who
are sick, family members like some people will tell you my wife is in
the hospital, when you come to the union, the union will assist in its
own little way.
We also have IT welfare scheme. We subsidize and sell computers to our
members in a way to encourage our members to be computer literate. We
give out computers at subsidized rate and you pay installmentally,
between 4-6 months.
We also have computer school quarterly, at least 40 members benefit from
it. We write to media houses asking them to give us at least 3
journalists for computer training, so that they will be computer
literate. A batch just finished, they are graduating next week or so.
We make our members computer literate and provide them with computers at
subsidized rate.
Again we have a land acquisition scheme. As I talk to you now, we have
done three phases of Lagos NUJ land acquisition programme. When we first
started we had over 300 journalists that benefited from it. The second
phase, about 150 journalists benefited. As I talk to you now about 600
journalists have land in various parts of Lagos State. There two areas
where we have land: There is one in Arepo [Ogun State, South west
Nigeria]. We have about 400 plots of land there. At the moment, a lot of
our members are home owners in Arepo, they have finished their houses,
courtesy Lagos State NUJ. There is another housing scheme in Owoelepe,
in Ikorodu, where we have about 120 plots of land. In Ikorodu about 120
journalists have benefited from that scheme. This land acquisition
scheme is open to every journalist in Lagos State: junior and senior
journalists alike.
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