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FEBRUARY 26, 2007 VOL. 20. NO 20

Gratuity with Tears

Abiye Sekibo, former Transport Minister, Nigeria

Twelve years after, displaced seafarers of the defunct Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), lament what they term as “peanut pay-off” by the Federal Government
By Innocent Chukwu
Although Joseph Kehinde Adigun was in quick succession distressed, displaced and frustrated out of his darling profession of seafaring, his sense of mediatation is not made parochial by his ordeals. He might have been depressed physically, materially and financially but not mentally. Besides resorting to “scavenging” to make ends meet for over a decade now, Adigun never hid his feeling of resentment to the authorities when recently fate compelled him to tell the Federal Government that he needn’t beg in order to get what rightly belongs to him.
Being a junior staffer of the defunct Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), the national carrier that went under in 1995 through an executive fiat by the late General Sani Abacha-led military government, Adigun, who is all out to “criticise the Federal Government’s insensitivity to the poor masses,” tearfully narrated to The Source recently how he toiled in the engine room department of the NNSL with the hope that a nation he served whole-heartedly would take care of his future when old age set in. Unfortunately, all Adigun’s cherished hope–even though it had lingered for over a decade now –as well as those of his contemporaries, were recently dashed when the National Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NAMASA) commenced payment of displaced NNSL seafarers (ratings) disengagement benefits on Friday, January 26, 2006.
Moments after receiving a cheque from Adegboyega Dosumu, Executive Director (Finance and Administration) of NAMASA at the seafarer’s pool in Apapa, Lagos, most of the seafarers were heard murmuring to one another about how badly the government had treated them.
The Source on enquiry learnt that the reasons the seafarers were aggrieved had to do with what they refer as the belatedness of the Obasanjo’s democratic administration in approving their severance pay. They further lamented that the pay-off were peanuts compared to how many years they put in working for the NNSL. Other seafarers complained that conventionally, seamen are paid in dollars so they expected that their disengagement benefits would come in “hard currency.”
Corroborating his colleagues, Adigun said: “They are supposed to pay us in dollars because that is the currency of seafarers, by virtue of the nature of their jobs. This amount is grossly inadequate. It cannot meet our basic needs. I lay the blame on the Federal Government because it said it cannot pay anybody in Nigeria in foreign currency.”
Adigun also decried what he referred to as “the computation of the figures.” According to him, it was in “negation of the basic elements of equity, justice and fairness.”
Yet, in a seeming acquiscence with the Biblical saying that “a living dog is better than a dead lion,” the seafarers gave thanks to God for sparing their lives, as they spared a though for some of their colleagues who have departed to the great beyond.
The Source gathered that what the families of the deceased seamen would have to go through in order to collect what is due their dead relatives may compel them to abandon the pursuit. In fact, one of the seafarers who came to collect his cheque said “it may take another 12 years before the issue of deceased workers of the NNSL who were disengedge in 1995 is resolved going by the way these things are handled.”
Based on The Source investigations, about a hundred families whose relatives died in the course of waiting for the disengagement benefits, would first of all have to procure a “letter of administration” which would then enable them to go for conversion, after which their names would be published in various national media for confirmation before they (families) would start to scale bureaucratic hurdles in order to claim their dead relatives’ benefits.
According to Ego Nwokocha, image maker of NAMASA who confirmed this to The Source, the families would have to assemble at a designated place to be told the task ahead. It was also learnt authoritatively, that the pay-off is between N300,000 and N700,000 per worker. But the time, effort and money it would take, especially less enlightened families, may force them to let go of whatever benefit their late relatives deserve.
Many of the families have thus started imploring the Federal Ministry of Transport (FMOT), which facilitated the release of the disengagement funds, to come to their aid. Some of the families, The Source gathered, do not even have the wherewithal to effect the pursuance of the “unknown” amount of money.
However, many industry operators have commended the effort and magnanimity of NAMASA in ensuring that the displaced seafarers get their severance package.
Nwokocha, the NAMASA Public Relations Officer, in a statement made available to The Source said that “the defunct Nigerian Shipping Federation (NSF), which was the sole agency for the recruitment and placement of seafarers, was directed to submit a computation in respect of the Rating Seamen Gratuity to the ministry for consideration.” Regardless, many analysts still argue that it is a gratuity that does not have much to be celebrated.