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ANTI-HUMAN RIGHT PRACTICES IN PRIVATE ORGANISATIONS: ANOTHER PROBLEM OF THE FREE MARKET ECONOMY SYSTEM.
By
Amire Peter .O. Ebunoluwafunmi LL.B(Hons)
In the words of Laila Gifty Alaita, “Everybody in the world, must work to earn a living”. This definitely implies that all persons with aspirations to maintain livelihood and survival on earth must do so by way of engaging in one or more economic and profit-making activities.
The federal republic of Nigeria as a sovereign territory is made up of different classes of persons aiming at earning livelihood and fulfilling their ambitions in respective capacities. The mere fact that Nigeria stands on the principle of a free-market economy has also made it more encouraging for individuals to massively invest in the Nigerian economic system and form a formidable private sector that would pave way for ownership of business entities in the country. This has also been one of the reasons for the huge emergence of private businesses in all parts of the Nigeria economy. It is believed that a free market economic system will not only aid citizens participation in the nation’s economic affairs, but will also help Nigeria as a country to leave the status of an underdeveloped nation to embrace prosperity and economic growth, thereby boosting the chances of her populace towards economic fulfilments.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines free-market as an economic market or system in which prices are based on competitions among private businesses and not controlled by a government. But over the years, corruption alongside stringent economic conditions have limited the impact of the competitive strength of the Nigerian free market economy especially in key areas such as the educational, pharmaceutical, telecommunications and the power sector.
The alarming level of poverty and unemployment in the country have been the major reasons why citizens have little or no choice in determining what they do or earn for a living and are been subjected to unfair, worthless and anti-human rights practices in their quest to achieve their desperate ambitions of fulfilling their desires, wants towards earning a living.
As William .J. Clinton rightly noted, “Work is about more than making a living. As vital as that is, it’s fundamental to human dignity, to our sense of self-worth as useful, independent, free people”. Private business operators have continually deprived citizens of their human dignity, self-worth and independent culture attached to them by reason of being human beings through their obnoxious policies, ambiguous job specifications and descriptions, rigid and anti-human right operational policies. Premising their excuse on the fact that they are teaching good morals and godliness, private tertiary institutions in Nigeria can conveniently bar it students from benefiting from the right to freedom of movement any day and anytime during their stay in the institution. Most private tertiary institution students do not even know what if it feels like to exercise the right to fair hearing and opine on serious matters affecting them while in school and this as earned them the tag “advance secondary school students”.
The trend of denying youths the right to eat what they feel like, wear what they feel comfortable with and even use mobile technological devices they like is un-called for. Private tertiary institution managements proceed under the misguided and erroneous belief that denying these students their basic civil, social and economic rights will shape their moral and domestic life for the better, not knowing that the best they have achieved so far is breeding an un-matched pretence level (in some cases, hardened mind-sets) and hypocrisy in students who will leave the four walls of the school one day with the zeal to know how social and youthful excesses look like. A lot of them even end up being worse than they previously were, no thanks to the anti-human right culture in which they have been subjected to at their various private tertiary institutions. Another terrible case of private organizational anti-human right activities can be evidenced in the unfair treatment meted-out on workers of private organizations in Nigeria. Directing workers to wait extra hours after normal work-routine hours, dismissal of workers without merit, unfair salary scheme (compared to the workloads) of workers etc., are few among the human right breaches experienced by workers in private firms.
It is even dishearten, appalling and cruel to see private firms denying their workers nationally recognised public holidays which every country has in its own calendar for reasons of selfishness and wickedness.It is a direct affront to the image of Nigeria as a country, a dent on our reputation and an act of total disrespect for Nigeria’s sovereignty to see private firms mandating their workers to be at work on the country’s democracy day (may 29) instead of allowing them to take part in the process of nation building by witnessing the change of power and governmental transition towards honouring their father land in their own little way. Private firms have suddenly inherited the autocratic style of governance by issuing internal memo’s directing and ordering their workers to remain in their offices even on a day the whole country is supposed to be celebrating perhaps the best thing that ever happened to us, which is DEMOCRACY.
The increasing level of poverty in the country has aided anti-human right practices in private companies by way of handing-down dictatorial powers of decreeing whatsoever they feel on their workers with the mind-set of acquiring compulsory cooperation and this have left workers with two difficult choices, (the first being to obey and the second, to face dismissal and join the largely unemployed populace).
The free market economy as given rise to anti-civil, political and socio-economic rights within the country and to remedy this, regulations must first be in place to monitor the policies and rules in every private organisation so as to check the excesses on their part. Standard operating procedures by regulatory bodies must be carefully drafted to clearly outline the limit to the powers of private businesses over their workers in line with the tenets of human rights.Government must carry-out its over-sight function of monitoring and maintaining a good grasp of specific sectors of the economy so as not to expose citizens to unnecessary and untold hardships experienced in the hands of private firms.Again, laws should be made by regulating bodies in the country that would enable mandatory/statutory workers union in all private organisations where workers can come together to deliberate on organisational issues affecting them and oppose (if need be) any obnoxious policy being administered on them.
It is only then that anti-human right practices will reduced to a considerably extent within the Nigerian private sector.
God bless Nigeria.
amipet11 