Nigeria suffers national power outage as labor unions shut down grid | Hacker News Reader

Nigeria suffers national power outage as labor unions shut down grid

theguardian.com

21 pointsanigbrowl6 comments

Given that The Guardian is a UK newspaper, I surprised by no mention of the strikes in the UK from 1972 to 1974.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_Kingdom_miners%2...

The reduction in electricity generation brought on from the strikes of coal miners prompted the Prime Minister to impose a three-day work week.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week

The disastrous consequences to the economy brought down the government, and began the era of Margaret Thatcher.

In another fifty years, whose turn will it be to suffer such instability?

Wouldn't it be something if the title of this article was: Nigeria suffers national power outage as gov't refuses to negotiate with labor unions on minimum wage

Hope your not using a med device that needs electricity

If you are you should already have a generator. Rolling blackouts are normal service there[1]. Their grid is something like 8x oversubscribed.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Nigeri...

“Since we undertook the nationwide protest against the recent hike in electricity tariffs, no government official has called us for discussion,” the TUC president, Festus Osifo, was quoted as saying on Friday. “Even the minister of power has not thought it fit to invite us for discussion.”

Seems like if people on medical devices die from this it won't be squarely the fault of labour.

> A minimum wage of N30,000 (£15) a month, agreed in 2019, expired this April. The unions are asking for an increase to N494,000 (£257).

And a different source:

"""Unions are demanding a huge increase in the minimum wage, saying workers cannot survive on the current rate of 30,000 naira (£18; $22) a month. The government is offering to double this but security guard Mallam Magaji Garba tells the BBC that this would not even be enough to buy a 50kg bag of rice, which he needs to feed his family each month. The bag of rice costs 75,000 naira ($56; £44) - more than the government's proposal, even before taking other expenses into account."""

- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6ppwz87vgqo

50 kg per month is 1.6 kg per day; rice is about 3500 kcal per kg, so 1.6 kg/day would just about feed 2 adults and 1 kid.

This government had picked a number so low that nobody could accept it even if they adored and worshipped them.

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