Nigeria’s example clearly shows that workers in port countries may have to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week with few protections for health and safety. In some countries, globalisation leads to the exploitation of child, and prison labour.
Goods produced in such countries under these conditions undermine those produced in richer nations. The result has been a call for ‘fair trade.’
Within richer countries, there is growing inequality as unfair competition from countries repressing workers’ rights to organise pushes down the earnings of the less skilled sections of the workforce.
Sadly also, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is interested in defending intellectual property and investors’ rights, but not those of workers.
Some years back, the Federal Government of Nigeria right-sized or downsized the civil service, and announced that about 36 thousand civil servants were to be retrenched. Till date, most ministries have been affected and more are still being retrenched, except for political jobbers and their relations still finding jobs, where they do nothing in particular.
The argument is that, most of the people retrenched are no longer relevant to the present scheme of work; therefore, they have to go making room for those qualified. Sound argument, but do you know that this is one of the negative effects of globalisation? Where the computer has taken over the work of the secretaries and secretariats.
Before you are employed today, you are expected to be computer literate; therefore, making room for a very few to be needed at any sector at a particular time. Have you ever imagine the numbers of people/dependants that would be thrown into poverty by this? No wonder political thuggery is on the increase daily, and most deaths are linked with high blood pressure because of fear of the future. Today, go to any drug store and ask of the fastest-moving drugs; they will tell you it is sleeping tablets. Most people no longer sleep naturally because the mind/thought is overburdened.
Have you realised too that with mergers, acquisitions and consolidations, more people are thrown back into the labour market, which is already saturated? Intense competition has pressured companies into streamlining their operations.
Have you also noticed that, it was after the merger of banks that banks now experienced more bank frauds, and forceful armed robbery attacks? This is so because some of these frauds and robbery attacks are perpetuated by sacked officials or officials who feel insecure, according to security reports.
To many, one of the greatest concerns about globalisation is the way it has widened the gap between the rich and the poor. Today, global wealth has increased, but unfortunately, it has become concentrated in the hands of fewer people and fewer countries. The net wealth of the 200 richest people on earth now exceed the combined income of 40 percent of the people of the earth – which is about 2.4 billion people.
While wages continue to increase in developed countries, about 80 percent of the underdeveloped countries have only seen a decline in average income in the last 15 years.
The world is complaining seriously about global warming. Our environment is being destroyed gradually. This has been fuelled by economic globalisation; where people are more interested in making gains than protecting the environment. Angus Purnomo, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Indonesia, once said: “We are in constant race with development… I’m worried that in a decade, we’ll be environmentally aware, but there’ll be nothing left to defend.”
The last decade to date has witnessed increased terrorists attacks. The September 11, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Centre in the US cannot easily be forgotten. The bombing in the train stations in Britain, Spain, and India years back, cannot easily be forgotten also.
Back home, the kidnappings and bombing in the North-Eastern states of Nigeria, and the total insecurity, are becoming alarming. Why? The GSM, which is a major gain of globalisation, has become and instrument for terrorists to carry out their activities easily unnoticed. With the GSM, bombs are easily detonated. With the use of the internet, fraud, commonly called 419, is on the increase, people are being swindled of huge sums of money daily.
I know you will agree with me that globalisation has brought diseases that are supposed to be alien to Nigeria. Diseases as well as people can now travel around the world more easily, and some of them are deadly. The recent Ebola incidences are clear instances of the negative impact of globalisation.
According to Jonathan M. Mann, a professor and expert in epidemics, “the dramatic increase in worldwide movement of people, goods, and ideas is the driving force behind the globalisation of disease.”
A United Nations’ report on HIV/AIDS has it that, AIDS pandemic, is now killing about three million people every year. In some countries of Africa, health workers fear that the disease will eventually kill two third of all young men and women. “Despite millennia of epidemics, wars, and famine never before have death rates of this magnitude been seen among young adults.” What will we say to this? Thanks to globalisation… What an irony.
I know you will be wondering what can be done? Things are the way they are because of the insincerity of world leaders.
Kofi Annan, a former UN secretary general, once said: “If globalisation is to succeed, it must succeed for the poor and rich alike. It must deliver rights, no less than riches. It must provide justice and equity, no less than economic prosperity and enhanced communication.”
Ask yourself, is it succeeding for both the poor and the rich alike today?
While technology may have made the world smaller, division still remains. The GSM, TV, and the internet have proved useful in connecting people, but not for uniting them. The truth in this continuing debate may seems irrelevant to majority of people, basically because most people have only a hazy idea of what globalisation is truly all about. But, whatsoever your opinion, globalisation does affect you already, and it will probably affect you even more in the future. To me, therefore, globalisation is 70 percent a minus to the world.
OSA VICTOR OBAYAGBONA
