OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BOLA AHMED TINUBU

Nigerian Workers Are Dying Silently Under Your Watch

Mr. President,

This is not blackmail. It is a desperate cry, the bitter truth, from the hearts of Nigerian workers, especially federal civil servants, who are dying silently under your watch.

The reality is harsh and undeniable. The minimum wage remains shamefully low, while inflation spirals unchecked. Today, the salaries of Nigerian workers are largely spent on transport fares alone. School fees have become impossible to pay. Caring for aged parents is now a luxury only the rich can afford.

Those who campaigned vigorously for you have now become subjects of public ridicule. People mock us for believing in promises that seem forgotten.

Yet, sir, we still believe in you. We believe in your Renewed Hope Agenda. But the bitter truth must be told: Nigerian workers are suffering.

Your own employees, the federal workers, are barely surviving. If empowered and well-paid, Nigerian workers can help reshape the economy from the bottom up. When money circulates among workers, the whole economy benefits. The furniture maker, the roadside mechanic, the peasant farmer, the market women, the pepper sellers and small traders, will be better patronised, and the economy will bounce back in the real sense of it.

Unfortunately, those currently advising you on workers’ welfare are failing you. Whether civil servants or politicians, many of them are either disconnected from the painful realities faced by workers, or they are deliberately insensitive. This is creating a dangerous gap between leadership and the governed.

Under your administration, politicians are feeding fat on public resources while civil servants are left to languish in poverty. Pensioners, especially those under the Contributory Pension Scheme, are living like paupers after serving their fatherland meritoriously. The various Pension Fund Administrators are feeding fat, living large, while the hen that lays the golden eggs continues to suffer.

Mr. President, 2027 is not far away. Those who truly care for you should place this letter on your table. The time to act is now and not tomorrow.

Workers no longer believe in Labour Unions—the NLC, TUC, and the rest have all failed us. As far as this writer is concerned, civil servants and pensioners now rely solely on God and you, Mr. President, for survival.

We are not asking for too much. We only ask for a reasonable and humane living condition, something relatively comparable to what workers enjoy in civilised nations.

Please, Mr. President, do not let this silent death continue.

The cry of the Nigerian worker is growing louder, though many still whisper it for fear of victimisation. But the pain is real. The suffering is real. And the nation is watching.

Your Diehard Supporter

(Resident in Iwo, Osun State)