Nigeria's power sector unions have issued a 21-day strike notice to the federal government over what they're calling widespread anti-labor practices, wage violations, non-remittance of deducted taxes and pensions, and worsening job insecurity. If the government doesn't resolve these issues within three weeks, the National Union of Electricity Employees warns, industrial action could cripple electricity generation and distribution nationwide.

This isn't new. It's barely even news anymore. Electricity workers threatening to strike over unpaid wages and poor working conditions is practically a quarterly ritual. What changes is the deadline. What doesn't change is the underlying dysfunction that makes these strikes necessary in the first place.

The union's acting general secretary wrote to the Minister of Power in late January, complaining that multiple letters about precarious work conditions in generation and distribution companies have been ignored since privatization over 12 years ago. "The Ministry seems not to be interested in the matter," the letter stated. Hard to argue with that assessment when the same complaints resurface every few months with no resolution.

Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu met with union representatives and Transmission Company of Nigeria management in early February to address the grievances. His message: be realistic. The government isn't opposed to improved pay, he said, but Nigeria's revenue constraints require restraint. Acceding to all demands would result in personnel costs consuming TCN's entire earnings, which he described as unsustainable.

He's not wrong about the math. He's also not addressing why TCN's earnings are so low that paying workers a living wage would bankrupt the company. The power sector has been dysfunctional for decades. Privatization was supposed to fix it by bringing in private capital and efficiency. Instead, it created a system where distribution companies collect revenue but don't maintain infrastructure, generation companies can't get paid for power they produce, and TCN (still government-owned) sits in the middle trying to transmit electricity through a grid that collapses regularly.

Workers are caught in this mess. Many haven't seen salary increases that match inflation. Some work without proper safety equipment. Pension deductions get withheld but never remitted to pension administrators. Union dues disappear. Meanwhile, electricity tariffs keep rising for consumers who still experience frequent blackouts. The money is going somewhere. It's not going to workers. It's not going to infrastructure maintenance. Where it's going is the question nobody seems interested in answering officially.

At the Kano Electricity Distribution Company, workers already commenced an indefinite strike in late January over similar issues: non-payment of pensions since 2014, poor working conditions, unfair promotions. The strike threw Kano into darkness and disrupted socio-economic activities. KEDCO management denied the workers' claims. The strike continued anyway.

That's what happens when trust breaks down completely. Workers don't believe management's denials. Management doesn't believe workers' complaints are legitimate. The government mediates by telling workers to be "realistic" about wage demands while offering no concrete plan to fix the revenue model that makes those wages unaffordable. So workers strike, power gets cut, Nigerians suffer, and a few weeks later everyone goes back to the same broken system.

Adelabu warned unions against "frequent actions such as locking management out of offices," which he said disrupts operations and undermines national development. He's asking for industrial harmony while the industry remains fundamentally broken. You can't have labor peace when workers aren't being paid fairly and don't trust their employers to honor agreements. You can't ask people to be patient indefinitely while their purchasing power erodes and their deducted pensions disappear into some bureaucratic void.

The 21-day notice gives the government three weeks to resolve issues that have festered for 12 years. The likelihood of meaningful resolution in three weeks: approximately zero. The likelihood of another strike that briefly disrupts power supply then ends with vague promises and temporary compromises: very high. The likelihood of actual structural reform that fixes the power sector's revenue model and ensures workers get paid properly: check back in another 12 years.

Nigerians will watch this play out like they've watched it before. Lights will go out. Workers will demand what they're owed. Government will plead poverty. Some compromise will get reached. And in a few months, when nothing fundamental has changed, the cycle will start again.