Decade Blogs - Editi Effiong - Dear religious people, let's kill all the gay people

Decade Blogs

Editi Effiong approached me to write a blog my #YourBlogOnMyBlog Series, having no clue about what he intended to write about, since we do have a good rapport on Twitter, I was quite grateful for the offer.

This piece one after my heart, it pertains to the struggles of a now visible community that has always existed in Africa, but have been denigrated, maligned, prosecuted, persecuted, harangued, abused and murdered by fellow Africans.

Our religious leaders and politicians have fanned the embers of barbarous lynch mobs to take the laws into their hands to find justification in acts too heinous for words.

I am so grateful to Editi that the email below was my response to him on receiving his contribution to commemorate my Decade of Blogging.

Blog - To Celebrate My Decade of Blogging

Thank you very much for the blog you have written for #YourBlogOnMyBlog Series, I am really touched by your sense of justice, compassion and humanity. Not many people out there are able to speak for minorities so diametrically opposed and different from them in more ways than one, especially a straight man speaking up for the right to life and the pursuit of happiness of gay people.

Before your eyes glaze over with unaffected indifference, please hear him out.

Dear religious people, let's kill all the gay people

Last week, we got the news that two men were murdered somewhere in Nigeria, having been caught having homosexual sex.

Apart from a small bubble from a minority corner of Nigerian social media, the event was hardly reported in mainstream media. This was unsurprising. After all, gay people got killed doing what, according to Nigeria's Parliament, is an unforgivable sin. It is not hard to see how big a national priority the gay problem is - it has been fast tracked through the National Assembly, in order to protect “our culture and way of life”.

As it happens, the “Gay Marriage Law”, which has NOT yet been signed into law by the President, has already claimed victims. Instead of the suggested 14-year jail term the law prescribes, our people may have decided to cut the process short, and take the law into their own hands by eliminating the ‘evil’ people from our society.

Before making any arguments on this unfortunate issue, I have to state a few facts: I am a heterosexual man, married with child, a practicing Christian, and a teacher of children. I also hold the belief that marriage is a union between man and woman - this is based on my religious beliefs.

I am also a believer in the right of adults to make personal decisions, as long as those decisions do not affect me, or my own rights. As such, if two men or women decide to have consensual sex, then so be it. Is it against God’s law?

I know exactly what the laws of the Bible say, and it is that judgement belongs to God. If gay sex/marriage is against the laws of God, then people engaged in it will be served their judgement along with everyone else on the last day, just like the rest of us imperfect souls.

Aside from the above, I am friends with a few gay people.

That manifesto done, I will ask the question: Why do we think attacking gay people (and even murdering them) is in anyway humane, righteous, or even regarded as a considerable action in a modern society? What have gay people done to us? Isn’t the right to life fundamental?

Gay people just want a right to life. Just like the one we've granted the actual criminals in our government.

They want a right to just live and exist in their own country. And they are not queuing up on the streets with placards asking to be allowed to marry (and even if they were, don’t they also have the right to?).

They aren’t even asking for decently reasonable pieces of the national cake like armoured BMWs, or presidential pardons. They're not threatening to burn down the country if one of their fellow homosexuals isn't made president by 2015.

Gay people aren't asking to be allowed to have sex with 8 year old kids, and marry them.

Gay people are not the ones stealing one-third of our oil resources in the Niger Delta, or asking for the right to operate illegal refineries. They are not skimming off billions of dollars’ worth of national wealth in form of falsely tendered oil sales balances.

No, those rogues are not gay people. Those demands and outright takes are from God fearing ‘straight' people, most of them ministers and prominent people in local churches and mosques. And before you claim homosexuality is a Western import, remember that our prisons are filled with people having sex with same gender. By our prisons, I mean Nigerian prisons.

But we must kill all those gay people. Because they're the sole, significant source of our national problems. What's more? The Holy Books say we should kill all the gay people. Or don’t they? Because God, in all his might, can't make judgment on his own anymore, and needs our help. And God had also recently declared that we should stop loving our neighbours as ourselves, as that's just old school stuff.

Luckily, that part of the Christian holy book that said "Thou shalt not kill" survived the new world order. A prophetic rewrite left that verse completely whole, with just a tiny clarification clause added. For our pleasure, Genesis 20:13 now reads "Thou shalt not kill, except if gay".

We are a holy people, Nigerians. We are so holy, we could have stoned Jesus for not being holy enough. So we have decided to fight God's wars for him. Since God has decided to not exterminate gays, we will show Him how it should be done.

One of grand inquisitors confronted me on Twitter with a couple of tweets, after I wondered in my tweets how much allowing gay people to live as they choose has affected the economies of Western countries. I decided to save this gem:

@eseblogger: @EditiEffiong We Shld therefore allow them to have their in humane way of live? Wht is the correlation btw nations Prosperity and being gay

In English - We should therefore allow them to have their inhumane way of life? What is the correlation between a nation’s prosperity and being gay?

I have no disagreements with Mr Ese. I’m only begging for mercy. Just like he was shown mercy, after he was dropped on his head as a child, leaving him per viable, with clear danger of growing up brain damaged. But he was shown mercy, and allowed to live. Look at him today! He's not only overcome his early life misfortunes, but is even able to construct complex phrases like "inhumane way of life".

(Disclaimer: my highly prejudicial investigation of Ese’s life history comes from nothing more than a disdainful glance at ONE tweet from him. Sort of the way we pronounce people guilty and deserving of death, only on account of being perceived as gay).

Ese, you represent the moral pillar of our generation and I applaud you for keeping the torch burning. I hope His Incorruptible Eminence, Rt. Hon. David Bonaventure Mark, is proud of you.

Before we all rush out with flame torches and pitchforks, knocking on door to door to execute God’s judgement, remember that the next gay person to be ‘brought to justice’ may be your own blood. How strong will your convictions be then?

Nigeria: #PayKeshi - A minister incapable of shouldering responsibility

Goaded by embarrassment

Nothing gets the Nigerian government of Goodluck Jonathan as agitated to be vituperative in overwhelming defence of their policies than a public embarrassment.

We must agree as they have severally demonstrated; they have no capacity for shame, but embarrassment shines a light into the nooks and crannies of the failings of the system that they close ranks sending out spokespersons to the media and Twitter/Facebook minions onto social media to stem the tide of criticism.

Yesterday, the calumny descended to a new low, quite shamefully contemptible that it left many seething with rage.

A man of distinction humiliated

Stephen Keshi, 51, as the manager of the Nigerian national football team since 2011 has won the Africa Cup of Nations in February 2013 and has successful added Nigeria to the contingent going to the Brazil FIFA World Cup in 2014. [Wikipedia] [Wikipedia]

Despite his successes as a homegrown coach, as at July 2013, he was owed five months’ salary and out of desperation in October he lamented that he was owed seven months’ salary. Some of this has now been paid. [BBC] [Vanguard Nigeria]

These were his words, in October, “The lowest point of my career is working and not being paid for seven to eight months. I have never had this kind of experience before.” [Vanguard Nigeria]

He earlier stressed the point with, “I am not being favoured. Whatever I am doing here, I am doing it with everything I have and I need to be respected and be paid.” [Vanguard Nigeria]

Stephen Keshi was then reacting to comments attributed to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF formerly the Nigeria Football Association NFA) that allowances and bonuses paid to coaching staff should be enough to sustain them. [Vanguard Nigeria]

A manner of calumny and atrocity

This appeared to embarrass the Minister of Sports, Bolaji Abdullahi, who yesterday upbraided Stephen Keshi for going public with this seriously untenable situation, some quotes from the news story are replicated verbatim below, courtesy of the Vanguard Nigeria newspaper. [Vanguard Nigeria]

“If NFA is having problems paying Keshi’s salary, it means that the system has a problem and that system has to be addressed.”

“When you get a job you do it and you don’t go about embarrassing your employers because your salary is delayed.”

Surely Keshi was right to talk

Nobody is saying the NFA/NFF does not have problems, however, if a performing and successful member of staff to whom the organisation has responsibilities and contractual obligations is not paid for up to 8 months that it becomes a demoralising and destabilising burden that could affect their productivity, there is cause for concern.

It is evident that from Stephen Keshi’s words that he was affected, despite that, he has fulfilled his contractual obligations without quibble, but with dedication and unrivalled patriotism worthy of the highest commendation.

And as the Sport Minister noted, if the NFA/NFF was having problems, it could report up the chain for intervention and resolution, it beggars belief that the NFF/NFA allowed the situation to deteriorate to the point that the coach had no other choice but to vent his spleen – 7 to 8 months with pay is just unspeakable.

A matter of assuming responsibility

This atrocity happened under the watch of the Minister of Sports. He had the choice of expediting the payment of all arrears along with an apology to all the staff owed their emoluments or in this case, for the embarrassment indicated by the failings of the NFA/NFF; he decided to make a villain of Stephen Keshi, a victim of the failed system in his ministry.

That is just shameful and lacking in sensitivity, though it is redolent of a culture of impunity amongst employers in Nigeria who get away with not paying salary on time, if at all with them demanding as in the words of the minister – “you get a job you do it and you don’t go about embarrassing your employers.”

I would say, the employer can avoid the embarrassment and shame by just paying the salaries.

That bill is essential

In conversations I participated in on Twitter, the matter of a third party owing the NFA/NFF sponsorship moneys was brought up. However, this is completely beside the point, a desperately unconscionable way to pass off blame and share the responsibility for what is essentially bureaucracy incompetence, lethargy, the lack of sensitivity and the lack of respect for the hardworking personnel who have brought plaudits and glory to Nigerian sport. [KickOff.com]

If the Workman (Unpaid Wages Prohibition) Bill had been passed through the legislative process to become law, the matter would have been cut-and-dried on the issue of responsibility. [Information Nigeria]

Somebody in the Sports Ministry hierarchy would have borne ultimate responsibility for the contracts and the payment of salaries to staff.

The organisation in the law would have faced a surcharge of up to 30% of two months’ wages for delaying salaries more than 30 days to a maximum of 60 days.

Any salary delays beyond 60 days will attract a 30% compensatory surcharge with the possibility of the employer serving a month in prison.

For Nigerian employees need it

The Minister clearly identified an employer – employee relationship between the coach and the NFA/NFF, a designated person will carry the sanction if imposed by the courts where the contractual obligations of prompt and full salary payments are left wanting.

It goes without saying that Nigeria is desperately in need of this punitive measure and law that protects the rights of employees whilst giving them the means to seek redress through an expedited legal process that provides specific legal guidance as to what is due, fair and just.

The NFA/NFF under the threat of sanction would have done everything possible to meet their obligations and the minister would have had no justification whatsoever to excoriate Stephen Keshi for speaking out for his right to be paid on time, in full, with due respect, courtesy and dignity becoming of an exemplary and hardworking Nigerian of repute and accomplishment.

A real man shares blame and glory

The Sports Minister has the gall to step forward to share in the laurels and the glory of sporting successes of Nigerians who still excel in spite of and despite the incompetence and negligence of the rotten bureaucracy, he heads. Where that system fails, he should unashamedly shoulder the responsibility for the lapses and the atrocities without looking to pass off blame to others.

His statement about Stephen Keshi was at best regrettable much as it was the display of utterly reprehensible conduct.

The humility of accepting blame

Those who have found ways to agree with the minister must for once find the humility in and magnanimous heart to sensitively take full responsibility and sue for justice rather than shirk and dissemble with sophistry.

Beyond this, Stephen Keshi becomes a poster boy for the many millions of Nigerians who have suffered the indignities of slave labour extracted on the forlorn hope of salaries that will never materialise.

I hope the legislature now sees why the passage of the Workman (Unpaid Wages Prohibition) Bill is of the utmost urgency with the case of Stephen Keshi putting a human face to unacceptable business practices in Nigeria.

Editorial: Legislating for the Unforeseeable of Same-Sex Marriage

Some background

And so the Nigerian Senators having spent 46 of the first 100 days of this legislative term in recess resumed the active duty of promulgating serious legislation which last week included the Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2011.

The bill after much lively debate passed its second reading, but it behoves one to examine the purpose and intent of such a bill in Nigeria today.

It is quite evident that in much of Africa a swathe of fundamentalist religious fervour has swept through many countries endangering the lives of homosexuals. In Uganda, for the past few years, not only has the clamour to criminalise homosexuality rang out, the punishments to be meted out included the possibility of the death penalty.

Tolerated impunity in Africa

In January, a gay activist was bludgeoned to death by someone ready to plead gay-panic defence and his death cannot have been unrelated to the harshly virulent, bigoted and intolerant rhetoric of politicians and religious leaders alike who have with Machiavellian determination mined the mob element of the people to support the atrocious.

In South Africa with both homosexuality and same sex marriage legal, lesbians have been subjected to “corrective” rape, some have died in such attacks and I was completely repulsed beyond measure when a video was circulated of the public humiliation of a lesbian in West Africa with onlookers literally cheering on.

In other words, the concept of the acceptance of homosexuality in Africa will only be under duress from free societies in negotiations for other things than it becoming an accepted thing in society.

No danger of progressive thinking

Now, that is not to say that homosexuality does not exist in Africa, it has existed amongst humanity from time immemorial and for many in Africa it has not required the so-called influence of Western societies for it to be present and possibly thrive, no matter how little the numbers are.

That said, it will take a leap of faith bordering on the impossible to countenance a time when same sex marriage will gain any form acceptance where the law already prescribes punishments not far off from what would have made the Mosaic stoning acts almost merciful.

In the reports about the debate, as we have observed in other countries where homosexuality laws have been repealed, the legislators employed interestingly colourful language, all possibly based on conjuring the most revolting images to blackmail the unpersuaded to take sides for this attack on civil liberties.

Blackmail by revulsion

Taking root from religious law, they have conflated homosexuality with paedophilia, incest and bestiality which probably happens more amongst professed heterosexuals but it never finds mention. It would be nigh on impossible for such legislators to promulgate laws against adultery or fornication, though one is not suggesting that they have the propensity for such.

In the case of rape, when mention was made of the gang-rape and criminal assault of a lady, a member of the House of Representatives had the temerity to question the need for such discussion in the midst of other pressing Nigerian problems – it would have been wonderful for such minds to prevail on the fact that same sex marriage is not on the horizon for Nigeria in the foreseeable future and hence the debate was just an abject waste of time.

The bill was sponsored by 26 senators of which 3 were women, one of whom was once a Federal Minister of Finance; it invalidates unions and does not recognise any same sex marriages contracted in foreign countries where such is legal.

Witnesses criminalised more

What is quite amusing about the penalties is where the subjects of the “solemnisation” of the marriage are liable to 3 years of imprisonment whilst witnesses to such an event face either a term of 5 years imprisonment or a fine of NGN 2,000 or both.

In terms of groups, the fine is limited to NGN 50,000. What is confusing about what is patently a bad law is that it appears the same-sex marriage participants are not as severely punished as the witnesses to such an event – there are no two ways of stating that a bad law punishes observers more than the actors – it is radically and patently flawed whilst at the same time unfortunate that supposedly learned legislators are blinded by moral fury so as to be oblivious of the miscarriage of justice that looms in the wake of this outrageously condemnable stance.

You have to ask if the stenographers or publishers of such laws for debate take time to review their copy, proofread the documents and ensure that ambiguity and incorrect spelling, context or content is accounted for.

In the section about the interpretation of the law, it suggests that “Same Gender Marriage” means the coming together of persons of the same sex with the purpose of leaving (sic) [I suppose living was intended here.] together as husband and wife or for other purposes of [a] same sexual (sic) [sex] relationship.

Unintended consequence already evident

However, let us not be given to unnecessary pedantry and look at the issues here; in the prevailing circumstances our Senators have just legislated for a mirage with the hope that they have handled an issue that hardly even if remotely touches any sense of reality – this bill shows an idleness of purpose with people so highly paid but lacking in principle, priority and focus to tackle more thorny issues that affect Nigeria and Nigerians at large.

Human-beings will always be human-beings and they will satisfy whatever feeling and persuasion they have regardless of the laws that encroach into the morality of society to attack an almost invisible minority.

The greater danger will be in the many who because of societal pressures will attempt to present public heterosexual lives whilst they pursue secret homosexual liaisons in what is commonly known as being on the Down-Low.

Societies that promulgate moral laws will always suffer from the almost schizophrenic tendency for people to live double lives, men or women with their families eventually getting caught up in literally unspeakable circumstances.

The wheels of social justice in reverse

The Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) Bill is not one Nigeria needs at any time, it is legislating for the unforeseeable in anticipation of the improbable where there are no extenuating circumstances of evidence available to show that the country is vulnerable or prone to any such development.

Even in countries where Same Sex Marriage is legal, the homosexuals are not flocking to the altar in droves, it takes a lot to develop relationships between people regardless of gender-pairing and somehow our learned legislators in attempting to appear knowledgeable have just exposed they utter ignorance of a side of human nature they are completely clueless of – if we have such lack of expertise addressing even more pertinent legislative issues in Nigeria, we are the much poorer for it and we are sadder for the brigandage that allows for so much to be paid for such inconsequential and irrelevant service to Nigerians.

In the end, where we have allowed moral laws to trample on the rights of other who have committed in the eyes of this unjust law victimless crimes, the wheel of negative social justice reforms is never stationary, it continues to roll until to encroaches on other rights abrogated by reason of some moral law or code – we already see that our leadership have to compelled to speak up for victims of sexually violence, they probably will not readily condemn violence against others as a result of this bill as we inure ourselves from the plight of others.

Acknowledgements

The basic document of the Same Gender Marriage (Prohibition) Bill 2011 the news reports of the debating the bill appeared on ThisDayLive and The Nation newspapers.

Editorial: Israel's legislative nadir

A rotten law

The passing of a law by the Israeli Knesset giving the right of vexatious civil prosecution to petitioners from parts of the Israeli State who have suffered boycotts marks a nadir in the democratic life of Israel.

There might be very little objective reason to boycott the substantive and legally constituted state of Israel; however, there is every reason by conscience, law and legality to boycott the settlements which are viewed by international law to be illegal.

What makes the law egregious, very bad and a departure from common-sense and reason is that petitioner does not even have to prove “economic, cultural or academic damage” was caused, as long as the petitioner can suggest, assume or imply that a boycott can be reasonably expected to cause damage no matter how contrived.

This law as much as it abridges the freedom of expression and choice of the Israelis by inference confers undue legitimacy on these outposts of the law where already too much is squandered in maintaining an uneasy calm on illegally annexed lands of the Palestinians.

Israel wants no peace

Religionists might for their ulterior purposes suggest that modern Israel which is a fraction of the promised Canaan of antiquity to Abraham and his seed is the ancestral land of the Jews; it is without doubt that the imposition of ancient literality over what must for global interests of today be figurative at best is unfortunate.

However, the biggest signal from the leaning of the current Israeli parliament and government of Israel is not of a state seeking peace with its neighbours but one of a belligerent hegemony whose concept of peace is really that of security borne of being superiorly equipped as a threat and menace whilst depriving its closest neighbour of any means of its own defence and military projection if that course of action becomes necessary.

One can so easily conclude that Israel probably enjoys its continual projection of pseudo-victim within a hostile Middle-Eastern neighbourhood; and as long as we are always distracted and confronted with the spectre of an existential threat to Israel the need to force the issue for peace never assumes the needed priority because any useful peace settlement might well make Israel pale into relative regional insignificance.

Justice needs to prevail

It goes without saying that codifying such atrocious laws into their statute books and by so doing conferring legality on an illegality does make the reasonable, fair and just begin to question the legitimacy of Israel – for whilst representative democracy might well be purposeful, it can yet be abused by the tyranny of ideology.

One would hope that the legality of this law gets tested in the highest courts of the land and the bench will with boldness contemn the intent, purpose, process and enactment of this law whilst striking it down with a stinging rebuke to all those who gave support to this travesty.

The case for State law over religious guidance

Civic responsibility above religious beliefs

In the light of the tussles between religious beliefs and civil obligations, I could not have wished for a better reference for legal opinion than one that was part of the rejection of an appeal based on a sacking the appellant believed was religious discrimination.

A marriage guidance counsellor with Relate [1] – a secular relationships guidance organisation – refused to offer counselling to same-sex couples due to his religious beliefs which were Christian in inclination leading to his being relieved of his duties.

The UK has seen a number of cases of civil servants refusing to perform their objective work functions on the grounds of it prejudicing their beliefs and hence withholding public services from people who do not seem to conform to their standards or moral values.

The gravitas of religious leaders contemned

In this case the former archbishop of Canterbury, Lard Carey even made representations to the Lord Justice on this matter and there has been a certain Christian persecution complex that has been gaining activist fervour with the subtext that Christians are no more allowed to express themselves with conviction – the converse of which is the appearance of prejudice and bigotry in Christian attitudes that are less than communal and inclusive.

Lord Justice Laws made some very far-reaching statements that could prove useful in dealing with religious laws in Nigeria whilst give all citizens equal access to a uniformly accepted set of laws dispensing justice and protecting rights without depending on any belief system apart from plainly being a member of that society.

The legal case is made for completely keeping religion out of State, civil matters and the law, the full text of this judgement should for all purposes be required reading for any student of law and I liberally quote from the statements made in the article as written in the Guardian [2].

Justice cannot be given a religious tint

He said, “Legislation to protect views held purely on religious grounds could not be justified, it is an irrational idea and it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

The Archbishop called for a special panel of judges with a "proven sensitivity and understanding of religious issues" to hear the case. He went on to say, recent court decisions involving Christians had used "dangerous" reasoning and this could lead to civil unrest.

This is not to suggest that the archbishop was intent on invoking a mob to run riot against judges that weigh the facts of cases before them objectively without the influence and prejudice of religious faith, but that could deny non-adherent justice if civil issues are adjudicated by a panel of clergy-like lords.

Uniform laws for all

The Lord Justice then went on to say, “We do not live in a society where all the people share uniform religious beliefs. The precepts of any one religion – any belief system – cannot, by force of their religious origins, sound any louder in the general law than the precepts of any other. If they did, those out in the cold would be less than citizens and our constitution would be on the way to a theocracy, which is of necessity autocratic.”

I do not think any stronger statement can be made for eliminating Sharia Law from being a part of the legal system in Nigeria on the basis that even in Northern Nigerian were the majority might be Muslim, all people do not share uniform religious beliefs.

"The law of a theocracy is dictated without option to the people, not made by their judges and governments. The individual conscience is free to accept such dictated law, but the state, if its people are to be free, has the burdensome duty of thinking for itself.”

Taking religion out of civil society

This is where it gets untenable, if the people are to be free, the state has to think for itself and not be bound by religious laws over which there can be no reasoning or it can be subject to malevolent interpretation in the hands of those whose religious influence might not necessarily be commensurate with the required legal training to administer justice fairly and honestly.

Whilst Lord Carey was at liberty to say, “The description of religious faith in relation to sexual ethics as 'discriminatory' is crude and illuminates a lack of sensitivity to religious belief.” It can also be said that religious faith that cannot comprehend or tolerate difference in humanity is insensitive and inimical to societal cohesion.

In essence, religion must well be kept in the religious houses where the people congregate for worship and where the 'religious' people mix with other facets of society the character, personality and quality of the person by reason of their beliefs should not be obvious; adequate discretion must be exercised as to what you have faith in.

Source

[1] Relate | About Us

[2] Christian counsellor loses court fight over sacking | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Nigeria: The plight of unpaid but working Nigerians

Unpaid in employment

This issue has been on my mind for months but I have never really been sure of how to approach the issue as a topic for analysis and serious debate.

A conversation I had yesterday presented a framework on which to hang the views I have on this matter.

I just conducted a search on Google for “unpaid workers in Nigeria” and “unpaid salaries in Nigeria” and the results read like an atrocious abuse of the workforce that have been browbeaten and enslaved into situations they probably cannot think themselves out of.

The list of organisations that have defaulted in what should be a standard binding contract that has moral implications, humanitarian concerns, the serious responsibilities that have been shirked to the point that it should be considered criminal conduct is appalling.

Offenders everywhere

In April the staff of Mobile Telecommunications Limited (MTEL) were on strike on the issue of not being paid for 5 months [1], The Nigerian Football Association was owing a backlog for a Nigerian coach running back almost 6 years [2] before the arrears were cleared a few months ago.

Workers at Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited had not been paid for 6 months [3], basically, this abuse pervades all areas of business endeavour in the public, private and unregulated sectors of the Nigerian economy.

I do wonder how any business can thrive if the fundamental worker incentive of getting paid is not there, workers have to endure months to years of hope and despair, unsure of how to make ends meet as they travel to work each day unsure of if they would be kicked out unto the streets on the sudden collapse of their company and without recourse for just recompense.

Employer – employee disconnect

There may be the issue of companies that have not sorted out the billing and collection aspects of the organisation before embarking on any venture who having engaged in a contractual arrangement cannot even trust the paper on which the contract is written because business owners lack requisite honour and integrity to be trusted to do what is right.

There seems to be a disconnect before the needs for a business to continue as a viable concern and the need to maintain and improve the productivity of the staff to make the organisation even more profitable and efficient.

Imagine being a patient about to undergo a serious operation in a hospital where the doctors, the surgeons and the nurses have not been paid for months and consider the risk at which a life has been placed in the care of utterly demotivated people - this scenario should be easy to extrapolate to other business organisations.

Legislate for the right to get paid – on time

There is no reason for organisations in the public sector in an oil-rich economy like Nigeria’s to delay the prompt and efficient payment of salaries to their staff.

In the private sector, there has to be a requirement introduced to ensure that funds are available to cater for the staff they take on and where that pool of funds diminishes a commensurate realignment of priorities has to be implemented to cater for properly compensated lay-offs and properly remunerated packages for those retained.

It is time to stop this practice of keeping the faith for miracle payments that might come at some bye-and-bye future date – companies that cannot pay for services should not engage those services.

Long-suffering or stupid

One can say Nigerians are long-suffering in one sense and probably stupid in another, they are held hostage on a hope for change which does not have a term except that of continually unfulfilled promises to the extent that employers even brazenly to think they are doing their employees a favour, by having them work for free for ages without any clear prospect of when they would be paid.

Workers themselves seem to be willing and resigned to accepting this situation without question, they are numbed into compliance by numbers and under the threat that their are others who would even probably pay to be employed.

It is criminal, whatever way you look at it, that this business attitude thrives with impunity and there is no recourse for serious punitive sanctions on the owners of those businesses.

One wonders if an employee eventually finds employment elsewhere where the business appreciates its duty and responsibilities whether that employee would still be entitled to the accrued arrears owed by the former employer or that would be forfeited.

Politicians can afford to feel completely unconcerned about an aspect of business development that requires some inspired legislation that begins to protect the right to a salary promptly paid for work done – they have allowances and salaries unthinkable to the hapless workers who make up their electorate.

Work for lesser incentive

Unfortunately, whilst I refuse to add this issue to my Apes Obey! Series, it is evident from Lord Lugard’s assessment of Africans of Nigerian descent – “he will work hard with a less incentive than most races” and this salary arrears business takes this matter to the extreme, people are being taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers who take all the profits and leave their staff in servile bondage without pay.

The effect on society has not been measured at all, where those few who happen to have the little from getting paid suddenly take on extended family responsibilities to cater for others who still have to get to work, pay the rent, feed the family, manage their health and send their kids to school.

A man’s dilemma

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, workers have responsibilities they cannot cater for because they are not getting paid and they have to contend with landlords, schools, doctors and other essential needs to keep body, soul and mind together.

We have reached a state where the ability to feel shame has been lost as everyone falls into debt as a means of scraping to survive – it must be a crime to employ without prompt payment and there must be sanctions that force business owners to forfeit assets to meet their responsibilities as employers.

Workers should not have to carry the blame for the mismanagement of the organisation or its funds; it should be fraudulent to have funds extracted from the organisation for other services when employers have not fulfilled their obligations.

Duty and responsibility of employers

Our society is fractured and broken because of these unconscionable activities and it is time to bring back the virtues of honour, integrity and binding contractual relationships that first define corporate social responsibility as a clear duty to employ within the means of the ability to pay.

There should be a perpetually binding requirement to pay up all arrears to existing and former employees or their named dependants before an organisation earns the respect of the markets and ratings that allow it trade without the anti-social sobriquet of employers being slave-traders in everything but name.

There should be an impartial ombudsman who monitors the corporate responsibility of firms with the power to force a delisting from the stock market, seize assets to pay up arrears, commit the principal officers to trial with sanctions that deprive them of their liberty and ultimately close the business or take it into administration with a management team that would turn things around.

At the risk of sounding socialist, we cannot pretend to be capitalist when the resources of production are press-ganged into communist sameness in the hope that feudal lords would be benevolent to the workers who have by default become slaves.

Sources

[1] allAfrica.com: Sourced from Vanguard - Nigeria: MTEL Workers Shut Down 200,000 Lines Over Unpaid Salaries

[2] BBC SPORT | Football | African | Chukwu demands unpaid salaries

[3] Daily Trust - the online edition - Ajaokuta Steel workers unpaid for six months

Same Sex Marriage gets read the Riot Act in Nigeria

This is my substantial comment on the first reading of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in Nigeria related to a blog on Naijablog.

Bugger did it

This is a very difficult matter and probably too difficult for the educated "elite" to appreciate.

One striking difference between the West and our "African" culture is this.

My parents are now in their mid to last 60s, when they studied in England, the worst thing you could call anyone was a "bugger".

It was viewed as and looked upon as the most despicable and disgusting thing of paedophiliac abuse not the love and victimless sexual acts between 2 men.

That informs many ideas that generation has of homosexuality.

So, imagine the furore that would be caused by outing yourself to your parents in Nigeria rather than indigene Western parents in Europe.

In fact, it is literally unmentionable.

Condemning Homosexuality and embracing inhospitality

As for the religious fervour against homosexuality, the 2 times Jesus mentioned Sodom and Gomorrah he was specifically talking about hospitality - that however, in those times might have been expressed as emasculation through some homosexual act.

The bigger challenge is for these religionists to learn the power of love by addressing what they find abhorrent with accommodation, tolerance and mercy.

No, they have taken the easier path, castigate and condemn the homosexual, highlight their supposed moral weakness and assuage your lack of charity by purporting to speak up for the moral majority.

In the end, the people who probably need the religious house the most are the most alienated from it.

Swing for skewed votes

Besides this, morality is somewhat a vote winner even if it does nothing appreciable for the way we are governed.

The 10 of the 11 swing states in the US where gay marriage was on the ballot with the presidential election in 2004 went to Bush.

The Democrats were caught napping and Karl Rove won the day.

Untrammelled rotten language on the floor

The bill is not good for Nigeria, but with no pressing desire to do the right thing about governance, leadership and solving real problems; the MPs have the opportunity to express themselves, out-doing each other with word-play, insult, innuendo and every imaginable unspeakable expression that would not be allowed on any other debating floor.

You will probably see Nigerian politicians at their worst because no objective debate can arise out the criminalisation of sexuality, people would contend about conscience even though they have no heart beating in their bosoms.

It is a black day in Nigeria; however, the vibrant if not bitchy Nigerian gay scene in West would just look on rather than fight lest they be singled out for flagellation and the dishonouring of their families back home.

The reality is homosexuality is about mankind not traditional values and Western influence, anyone anywhere can be homosexual – well say that to Bishop Akinola.

Sexuality blogs archive

A Google Queer Match – March 2006

Tough as a heart of stone – March 2006

Prison Exults with Gay Abandon – March 2006

When we were gay – January 2006

Does gay marriage affect your marriage? – November 2005

Understanding freedom, responsibility and tact – February 2005

Tolerance as a mindset of choice, prejudice and hypocrisy - Part 1 – April 2004