Nigeria’s President, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, says an executive bill on the new minimum wage will soon be sent to the national assembly.
In his speech on Democracy Day on Wednesday, Tinubu said that the federal government has been negotiating with organised labour “in good faith and with open arms” on a new national minimum wage.
He added that in the process of reforming the economy, he will always listen to the people and never turn his back on them.
“We shall soon send an executive bill to the national assembly to enshrine what has been agreed upon as part of our law for the next five years or less,” he said.
“In the face of labour’s call for a national strike, we did not seek to oppress or crack down on the workers as a dictatorial government would have done. We chose the path of cooperation over conflict.
“No one was arrested or threatened. Instead, the labour leadership was invited to break bread and negotiate toward a good-faith resolution.
“Reasoned discussion and principled compromise are hallmarks of democracy. These themes shall continue to animate my policies and interaction with the constituent parts of our political economy.
“I take on this vital task without fear or favour and I commit myself to this work until we have built a Nigeria where no man is oppressed.”
At the last meeting of the tripartite committee on minimum wage, organised labour had rejected the N62,000 proposal by the government and insisted on ₦250,000 as the living wage for an average Nigerian worker.
Chris Onyeka, assistant general secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), had said the unions “never contemplated ₦100,000 let alone of ₦62,000”.
“We are still at ₦250,000; that is where we are, and that is what we considered enough concession to the government and the other social partners in this particular situation,” he said.
“We are not just driven by frivolities but also by the realities of the marketplace, the realities of things we buy every day: bags of rice, yam, garri, and all of that.”
