The President General of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria, MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju has said that his greatest achievement as a labour leader in the Nigerian Maritime industry is industrial harmony the sector enjoyed.
Adeyanju also said that the industry thrived under his leadership because progress can only be made in a peaceful environment.
The outgoing labour leader explained that the shipping sector for the first time in its history and after decades of struggle, has a Minimum Standard for Conditions of Service established through the National Joint Industrial Council (NJIC). “We were able to achieve a benchmark figure of N200,000.00 as minimum wage for shipping workers.” He stated.
He further explained that the Dockworkers Minimum Standard for Conditions of Service has been regularly upgraded through the NJIC, and the pay package of the dockworkers is now at a level never seen before in the Dock Labour industry.
He said: ” As President General of this great union, I am elated to be able to stand today in solidarity with my co-executives. The powerful executives of this administration who have been a wonderful team and support system. Together, we have struggled and achieved numerous things, and whilst time may not have allowed us to achieve all that we set out to do, but they are the ones with whom I have been able to achieve the many milestones and growth indices I am about to highlight.
“As for the Nigerian Ports Authority workers whose emoluments had remained stagnated for up to eighteen years before our administration came on board, we were able to break the jinx and now their remuneration is at its highest in over two decades.
“The development witnessed during our administration at the National level is also observable. We have been able to transform the national secretariat inside out, giving it a face lift and general renovation, and we did not stop there, we also revamped our internal operations to meet global digital standards.
“Similarly, we recently had the MD NPA on the premises to commission and declare open our annex building which we built to accommodate more officers in line with the operational needs of our expanding union.
“To cater to the increased demand for efficiency of our secretariat workforce in line with our expanding union membership, our administration has regularly organized training programs for our secretariat workers.
“Aged Seafarers: the unpaid disengagement benefits due to the Aged Seafarers has reached the final stages of approval and will be paid to all the affected Seafarers of the defunct Nigerian National Shipping Line, NNSL.
“Under our tenure, we have been able to achieve global positioning of the union through our alignment with the International Transport Workers Federation. I was elected the Global Vice President of the ITF and the Chairman – African Region of the ITF.
“One of our landmark achievements is the peace and stability of the maritime sector enjoyed throughout our two tenures. We employed dialogue to resolve issues, and changed the face of our advocacy. The era of being labelled thugs or “agbero” is now in the past.
“In the area of infrastructure, we have been able to achieve funding and complete preparation to execute a unique and first-of-its-kind project: the Multipurpose and Multicultural Seafarers Centre.
“We also collaborated with key allies and affiliate unions for the betterment of the maritime and logistics sectors. For example, we collaborated with NARTO, with AMATO, in respect of maritime/haulage operations management. And more recently, we signed an MoU with the Joint National Transport Safety Committee of Nigeria (JNTSCN) to collaborate on upgrading road haulage operational safety nationwide.
“Under our watch, the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria and the maritime sector have witnessed unprecedented development and we are honoured to have been of service to my union and the nation.”
Excerpt
How do you feel as you step down as a President General of this great association?
I feel great, honoured and elated that I’m about to step down and I’m trying to hand over to somebody who has been on the job throughout the eight years I’ve served. A good leader must have a successor. For the past three or four years, I’ve been having plans for my successor. Somebody handed over to me, and in some ways, I’ve enjoyed myself without any problem. That’s why I pray to my God to give me that opportunity to have a very good person that will take after me. Stepping aside is a good thing in life.
I remember when I was coming on board, I came in turbulence. The journey was not clear. There were a lot of persecution and embarrassment as a result of name-tagging about the union then. For me, to be given this kind of encomium and accolades here and there, I am thankful to God and my parents. The organisation is reformed today. For me to have come a long way to where I am today, it is God and humility. When you humble yourself, you submit yourself before the authority and even before the cleaner. You should be humble to your cleaner, how much more the global trade that involves Maritime Workers from Nigeria and their port officials.
I also thank God because I’m going to witness handing over government to another government and in the next ten days, we will have new executives.
How easy was it to get into this organization? Was there always a problem in transition?
Well, out of twelve children or five children you have, you would have known the one that is going to bury you among them. All of them cannot behave the same way. Out of the contestants that are contending for the office, I think I need to pick one. It was always rough in those days. Election of Maritime Workers of Nigeria is about to take place in ten days, and there is nothing like gun shot, cutting off heads, killing or mayhem .In those days, nobody passed this place. Our election is going to take place peacefully in Lagos.
If you ask me about how we came about that and what brought that reform, I can tell you that I would have been killed in this office years back when I was a treasurer here, when election was about to take place, the man in charge then said no, that election will not take place.
We had to lock close to thirteen of our members and national officers inside one small room, the small office that I had for my cashier then because if they had seen them, that would have been the end of every one of them. When I came on board, I said that era of thuggery and hooliganism was over. Today, we are identified as an international body, we are not local.
That awareness is what we have been passing to them, and I think choosing them was very easy for me. The people that I want to contest for the office of President General and the other offices are insiders. Unlike before, if people are no longer in the office, you will see them claiming that they are a members of the union. That’s very wrong. If you are not a card-carrying member of the union for six months, you cease to be a member. But it wasn’t like that before. If you step aside, you still want to come back again.I say no because this is my own regime. We will not accept that kind of thing again. I have helped the system because I have responsible leaders and executive that understand the way the game was before and the way the game is now.
We should not allow tribal sentiment and crisis to continue to engulf the system. So, choosing my successor was very easy because I align with all the contestants. I will always say, my friend, I know you have a war with me. Why don’t we give it a try? Because in our constitutions, we have what we call rotation and dockworkers was the first to produce President General, followed by Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), and myself. The dockworkers have produced twice and NPA produced once.
Let’s look for seafarers and shipping that have not produced any President General and pick one. I said well, let me start from seafarers. There’s no way I want to disenfranchise anybody not to contest. It’s there in the constitution. If the elder says this is what we are to do, and somebody says no, the constitution permits the person to go for the office. Those are the things we did. We already picked somebody from seafarers and the other people said they want to contest. I told them that they that are from NPA and cannot pick form again. I told them to go for another office. We can accommodate them in another office. Somebody can’t pick form to replace a sitting PG from the same branch when his tenure is about to end after two terms. Anyone that wants to come from dockers, cannot even do that, because I am their sitting President General. If that happens, the whole world will be looking at us as if we don’t know what we are doing.
What happens to other children? That’s why we picked seafarers for now. After the seafarer might have finished his tenure as the President General, then the last person, that is the shipping, will come in. They have a very good opportunity to produce other leaders after the man that is about to be elected into the office next week.
At the time you contested then, were you not worried at the heavy assignment you had being President General?
I have worked with various leaders like Chief Ogunleye who happened to be my mentor. He was one of the toughest President General we had in those days. He spent close to 14 or 15 years in the office. When we were having an amalgamation of trade union movements, all the other unions that had been separated now merged.
For somebody that started from grass roots, you should know what to do when you are given leadership. If I am not a carpenter, there is no way I am going to become a furniture man because I am a dock worker per se that has worked under various leaders. I must have gained one or two experiences from the man. That was what helped me. I started from labour, to operations manager. There is nothing I have never done in the port. It is God that gave me that opportunity and experience I used in piloting the affairs with all my leaders. I worked with Ogunleye, Chief Irabor, Ukaumunna. Tony, who happen to be my brother, handed over to me and that is where the reform started from. It started from him. It was properly reformed after Irabor left, because Irabor came in with a lot of crises then when the port was to be concessioned to private hands.
Close to 13,000 workers in NPA lost their jobs. He came in at the wrong time, but he was able to manage it with the support of God. I was the treasurer during that period. I have gone passed through all those offices and that I know how it works. From unit to president, to national treasurer, then president general of MWUN in Nigeria. So, I have the little experience that I can use to manage this office. Unlike before, this is not the way our secretariat looked like. We did a lot of things to give it a face lift. If you are representing your workers in an international body, you need to let them know that, you are no longer the name tagged agbero.
The union is reformed to a standard, and we can compete with our counterparts all over the world.
I often wonder how you juggle all your roles because I know that you are into so many things and you serve so many bodies. How do you juggle all of those things?
When you have God, you have everything. God is the one who juggles all those things for me. Growing up, my father was a military person and he was very disciplined. He died in 1976.That is what made me a worker in the port. It helped me to be disciplined. There are some people who get this kind of opportunity and mess it up because they don’t have the experience as a worker in the first place. They want to become president of dock workers. How would they manage dock workers when given the opportunity? Because, I started from grass to grace, I know the four arms of this port. I can tell you approximately what is going on in all the ports.
It is because I was involved. If I wasn’t involved, there is no way I am going to know what is happening in Tin Can Island Port , Apapa Port, Port Harcourt port, Calabar port, Bayelsa. I was given a mantle of leadership as the president of that particular branch called dock workers. How am I going to work? Because the experience is not there. If you see Port Harcourt now, the port manager called me, and said my boss has shut down the port. The first time I asked from the port manager about what the problem was, somebody who is not a dock worker, who doesn’t know anything, will say he will resolve it. What is he resolving? Was it their welfare? If he said it was about their welfare, that’s fine
What happened? Who is there to pay them their rights? The way you start your career under a particular person matters. And that good that he has learned from you has paved way for his success of today. That’s what people fail to realize. For me, I humble myself and I respect people a lot . When I respect you, I will give you what you want. But sometimes when you disappoint me, I will pay back, because I don’t look for trouble where there is no trouble, but if you trouble me, I will trouble you. That gave me an opportunity to manage this sensitive office. I engage in dialogue because I believe in dialogue. Why am I looking for trouble when the trouble can be resolved between the two of us or three of us? It is when you don’t say yes, and you cannot agree with me, that we can declare trade dispute.
All the stakeholders know the way we handle our affairs, does it generate into crisis? No, we manage it. If there is threatening, we threaten. We give ultimatum. Ultimatum is not suicidal, it’s an awareness between employer and employees so that everybody will correct themselves. Those are the things I learned from my leaders. I learned the good side, the bad side, and the ugly side and I weighed all options. I know where I came from. I’m from Oyo. And when you have a royal lineage, you’ll be able to manage the palace properly. That one too is working for me.
Are there areas you think you can still work on that will help the maritime sector if the government provides a level of support and involvement for the Union?
Our union is open. We can’t do it alone without support from the government and stakeholders. How is the future going to look like after I step aside? Everybody is playing a good role. Yes, they want to associate with Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria and it might be because of me or someone else in the maritime industry. If you don’t send me out, nobody would know me. We all need to work together. We should be our brother’s keeper and we should know what we are doing. Left to me, we’ll continue to support the system and we’ll continue to support the government. We don’t have any other country called Nigeria. This is our country. It’s not until we die in silence that somebody will say he didn’t know that there was a problem.
If you have a problem, tell somebody that is beside you who can be of assistance. It has made me move forward.
The maritime sector, like you said, is a very important sector in Nigeria. Do you think we’ve utilised all the avenues and opportunities that exist in that sector to make it a vibrant one to look at?
Thank God I have a guru here who has been relevant to all the stakeholders in the industry. The Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, I believe is an old wine in new bottle has divided the means of transportation. There are a lot of things that the government can tap from that sector, agriculture is there. We have fishing trawlers and so many things that we can tap. The union has been propagating and we have been providing support to the government. If you are a minister, you need to serve well. If you are a governor, you should perform well. To me, the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria has expanded our scope beyond supporting government. We’ve been supporting them and advising them about how to move forward. I believe the new Minister is doing his best. I am not speaking for him but he’s trying. It is not easy to be a Minister in charge of ports because if he is not doing the right thing, the world will talk bad about him to change the state of the ports.
But he has come, he’s trying to change the face of the port operations. Recently they’ve appointed another Managing Director of NPA who is an insider. He has added more value. Bringing in politicians to come and become an MD of NPA is like shoe cobbling. We are not repairing shoes here in the port. It’s a global trade area. They did not employ somebody who is an insider, who knows the job properly.
Chief Adebayo Sarumi, who was an insider performed wonderfully well. They brought another person who was a technocrat and knows the job. He’s a PhD holder and he started his career as a youth corp member .He’s now the Managing Director of the Nigeria Port Authority. What do you expect? He’s going to perform well if we give him an opportunity to perform. If you look at our ports, they are old and need restructuring compared to international ports. Port of Egypt is not as big as our port here, but look at the infrastructure and what is going on there. Likewise Cotonou. They are not up to Lagos state in terms of population but look at their ports. In our port at Warri, there is nothing there. It’s an ancient port. The draft of Calabar port when fully dredged can take as many big vessels as possible.
But because they did not dredge it for years, bigger vessels cannot go there. Are we not losing a lot of revenue? Because we have been saying we want to generate more revenue from the port. The oil now has been taken over by a cartel and the cabals and they are now regulating us. How do we buy fuel in our own country. What happened to the refineries? What happened to Kaduna Refinery and Port Harcourt Refinery? We’ve only seen it on pages of newspapers that our refinery is working and the price is still going up. It is Dangote that is now regulating our fuel in this country. If the government had not given us that license, where would Nigerians be getting fuel from? For the government to say no more subsidies we, are suffering it including the poor masses. The rich are getting richer because they know their way.
Speaking about your growing up, where were you born?
I was born in Oyo and I am from Oyo Alaafin, Atiba Local government. I grew up in various states because my father was a soldier. He moved from one barrack to the other but I never enjoyed him because at that time, he was not always available. My mother advised me not to join NDA. My mother just called me one day and said, look, your father is a soldier, he killed so many people during the war. Do you want the sin of those people he killed along with his boss to revisit you? So I changed. I had to go back to Lagos. I attended St. Timothy’s College, in Mushin. I was in Lagos throughout my life.
Today, the story has changed, because what brought all of us here is circumstances. The circumstance of not having anybody to take care of you when you lose your dear ones.
We all found ourselves at the port. I came through one of my uncles who brought me, and that was in February 26, 1976. My first port of call was Berth 6 in Anchorage, where a poor boy who doesn’t know anything had to be on board a vessel. I had to use a rope to enter the vessel, and I tried. I spent three months there. I didn’t go home. I didn’t come down. I couldn’t communicate with my mother, who happened to be a widow, because there was no phone. I was paid N1.29kobo daily. If you work on Saturdays and Sundays, you’ll earn N3.29 kobo and N4.00.
All my education and international exposure happened in this port. I encouraged and empowered myself.
What kept you going? What gave you the confidence to come here?
It is God. When you associate yourself with people of likeminds, you’ll keep moving, but when you join the bad people, you’ll not get to anywhere .Life has taught me how to be good, but I don’t like the bad side of life, because I’ve tasted it. When you don’t have a parent that supposed to have made you to be recognized when you are alive, and you become a nuisance to yourself, that is the bad side of life that I don’t like. To lose your breadwinner at a tender age, is a bad life. There are no more companions when you lost your parents at a tender age. Life is not going to be the same until when God intervenes. So somebody like me, have tasted all those things. My humility to people is because I’ve tasted the bad side of life and I know how it feels. For ten years, I had no job inside the port and I was sent away as a result of unionism. The man that asked me to leave the port there is now with me, he’s now a leader. Many of us were sent out of the port as a result of our elections.
Ten years ago, if you heard port, it’s like you are going to the US. They won’t allow you to enter the port because you are not supporting them. And if they see you to be an aggressive person, you are in trouble. Two people couldn’t stand to talk. They will say you are trying to overthrow the government. I faced all those kind of things in life. When I came back, I said no, it’s a free world. There is freedom of belonging, freedom of association and others. The law is very clear and it helped me because I’ve tasted bad life. I lived in Mushin throughout my life. From Ojuwoye public school, I went to St. Timothy’s college before proceeding to the higher institution. I stayed at Ilupeju for years, the corridor of power in Mushin. Today, we are tasting the good side of life so that we can encourage and empower younger people.
Do you have any regrets?
I regret losing my father and my mother. It is painful to lose both parents. The love will no longer be there. Forget about the love for a wife, the real love is from your parents and children. Look at the children we are having today. 70% of the love they say they have is for their mother and 30% is for the father. Especially the children we are having in this digitalized age. The time my mother was supposed to enjoy with me, when I had a big house and everything, she died that year when she was supposed to move to the house. Anytime I go to where she was buried and I see the house I built for her, I always feel sad because she didn’t eat the fruit of her labour .If my mom were to be alive, we would be there. Losing my mom was painful to me because she was my second god. She made me to understand the world better.
God is taking care of me, I’m not rich, but I have people and I know people. I always close from here by 9:00 p.m. in the night and I always resume by 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. in the morning. I always have a number of meetings to attend in a day. I did not see the position to be anything to me except for service to workers. I see the position as an avenue to serve people. God has seen millions of people before identifying me among my colleagues. Some of my colleagues which we started working onboard vessel are still there but God picked me out and said I should head this place. Won’t I sacrifice my life for them?
When we talk about condition of service for dock workers, seafarers, shipping and NPA, I did it for them and that is why they don’t want me to leave. I told them that I don’t have an agenda of going for third term. I wouldn’t even change the constitution because God has given me the time to spend here. I am still the ITF global vice president, and the deputy president of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). I thank God that I’m still going to be part of their Board of Trustees. I am still within the family and we will continue to give advise. The person that is coming to take over from me is like a son and he is very responsible. I have seen it in him that he is a good negotiator. He’s going to do better than me because I pray that my children should grow up more than me. He’s very sellable and marketable as well. He’s not a marketer that will market the soul of the workers into the hands of the employers.
I can vouch for him, he is very disciplined. I so much believe in his words because he has been with me for many years. I also know his character. When I look at the constitution, I decided to pick him. It can’t be NPA dock workers affair. It should be the other four affairs so that we can rotate it properly for equity, fairness and justice. He will never disrupt the good things that our founding fathers have laid down. He needs to build on it and do more than we have done. He should do Justice to the things I was not able to finish. We have a lot of projects at hand. ITF has given us a grant of 400,000 to 500,000 pounds to have a recreation center for seafarers and dock workers in Nigeria today. It has never happened in the history of this Union. Very soon, we will build the foundation because we are looking for a suitable place that will house it.
You appear to be the most decorated union leader in the maritime industry Union. Today, the counterparts in the senior staff gave you an award and a portrait. How do you feel about that?
I feel happy in the sense that a brother and comrade was able to organize this befitting outfit and celebrate me today. It has never happened in the history of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria
What message do you have for your successor to be able to fit into the big shoes you are leaving behind?
Leaders should be celebrated when they are alive. We shouldn’t celebrate people when their condition is bad. We need humility and submissiveness. The founding fathers of this Union were not celebrated but for me, coming from the background of dock workers branch, the senior staff including the management of NPA came to honour me. These are two ports managers and they are managers of sensitive ports in Nigeria. I want everyone to extend the hand of what they have done to me to the incoming President General.
I was thinking that I wasn’t doing well not until I saw people talking about what I have done.I believe God sent me here to work and not to enrich myself. For the senior staff to have gathered everyone even from Port Harcourt, and the management of NPA to celebrate me here today, I thank God
Aside being deputy president of the NLC, which is not as engaging as PG of MWUN, what will you be doing after ten days from now?
I will rest and be with my family that have missed me for years including my children and grandchildren.I will be with them for a while.
Don’t you plan to go into agriculture?
Leave that one to God.
