MINIMUM WAGE SHOWDOWN: FG IN DILEMMA AS 10 STATES OFFER NLC HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE
MINIMUM WAGE SHOWDOWN: FG IN
DILEMMA AS 10 STATES OFFER NLC HIGHER MINIMUM WAGE
Plateau
tops list with N57,000, Abia follows with N42,000, Jigawa N32,000, Nasarawa
N31, Kano N30,000, Gombe N28,000, Borno 27,000, Bauchi N25, Adamawa N23,000 ,
Ondo N22,000, Taraba N20,000 …Lagos, Enugu agree to pay whatever Southern
states will pay …Akwa Ibom, Imo, Ekiti, Katsina, Oyo, not specific
…Delta
unable to accommodate any salary increment on current FG allocation
…Tiny
minority working to truncate new workers’ pay and we won’t budge-NLC
By Soni
Daniel, Northern Region Editor
Strident efforts by the Federal Government to
stave off nationwide strike by the organised labour, appears to have hit the
brick wall following a startling revelation by the Nigerian Labour Congress on
Monday that no fewer than ten states had offered to pay more than the N24,000
minimum wage suggested by the government.
L-R: Edo State Governor, Mr., Godwin Obaseki; Kebbi State
Governor, Abubakar Bagudu; Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong; Minister of
Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige; and Osun State Governor, Ogbeni Rauf
Aregbesola, during the meeting between state governors and the federal
government over the new minimum wage in Abuja, on Tuesday, October 30, 2018.
It
will be recalled that the organised labour on Sunday shunned a final
rapprochement meeting with the Federal Government to adopt a new minimum wage
of N24,000 agreed by the federal government. The NLC had said that it would not
attend any fresh negotiation with the government-led tripartite team, having
negotiated and adopted N30,000 as the new minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
“We
will never attend any further meeting for the purpose of negotiating or
debating another national minimum wage having agreed on N30,000 last month with
the federal government,” Mr. Uche Ekwe, Head of International Relations of the
NLC, told Vanguard on Monday.
“We
have concluded all matters related to new national minimum wage and if the
politicians are unwilling to pay that basic minimum but continue to connive and
work against the interest of the Nigerian workers they should hold themselves
accountable for that and leave out of any meaningless meeting,” Ekwe said.
Pressed
to explain, if the orgainsed labour could talk of any agreement when the
government had not entered into one with them, the labour leader said that the
federal and some state governors were actively working to truncate the decision
already reached with labour so that they would not pay the new minimum wage.
Ekwe,
who brandished a document showing what the respective states in the country
offered to pay in writing during the tripartite negotiations, denied the claims
by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum that they could only pay a paltry N22,500 as
minimum wage. The top labour official indicated that no fewer than ten of the
36 states had offered to pay wages much higher than what the federal government
was tabling as new wage and warned that there would be no peace in the country
until the N30,000 was adopted as the new benchmark.
According
to the document made available to Vanguard, Plateau State had offered to pay up
to N57,000 when labour initially insisted on N67,500 but later came down to
between N25,000 and N30,000. The labour document, which has now been released
to the public as part of the NLC move to prove that the government was
unwilling to pay more than what it is offering, indicated that: Abia offered to
pay at least N42,000, Jigawa N32,000, Nasarawa N31,000 while Kano offered to
pay N30,000 as minimum wage.
Similarly,
Gombe State is said to be willing to pay N28,000, Borno 27,000, Bauchi N25,
Adamawa N23,000 , Ondo N22,000, and Taraba, N20,000.
The
anger of the NLC is that a tiny minority of federal and state officials is
actively taking steps to truncate the payment of the new wage, which states
with weaker economic fortunes had agreed to pay.
However,
labour is most disappointed with states that receive high allocations from the
federal government and also net high monthly internally generated income but
have deliberately refused to offer to pay anything to the exiting N18,000
minimum wage.
According
to the document, Lagos offered to pay whatever other southern state government
would pay while Enugu State also agreed to pay any amount agreed centrally.
On
the other hand, states like Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Imo, Bayelsa,
Ekiti, Kogi and Katsina have remained silent on the new minimum wage, opting to
wait and see what the government would eventually come out with.
However,
Delta State, which is one of the states that receive the highest revenue from
oil and IGR, made it abundantly clear to labout that it could not ‘accommodate
an increase for now on the present federal government allocation to the state’.
According
to some of the Niger Delta states, which receive 13 percent of the federation
revenue monthly, they can only talk about increasing workers’ pay if the
federal government reduces its own share of national revenue and gives more
money to the states.
Rivers
State Governor, Nyesom Wike, openly canvassed that position last week and
blamed the federal government and the All Progressives Congress for the ongoing
minimum wage palava with workers, saying that it was their headache.
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