President Bola Tinubu has guaranteed the Organized Labour that an executive bill on the new national minimum wage for workers will before long be sent to the National Assembly for passage.
Tinubu made this known in his second Democracy Day speech on June 12, 2024.
“In this spirit, we have negotiated in good faith and with open arms with Organised Labour on a new national minimum wage. 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,” the President said.
He said in the face of Labour’s national strike on June 3, 2024, none of the leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) were arrested or threatened.
“Instead, the labour leadership was invited to break bread and negotiate toward a good-faith resolution,” he said, adding that “reasoned discussion and principled compromise are hallmarks of democracy”.
Reforms Will Fix Difficulty
Tinubu likewise recognized the economic hardship in the country and empathized with Nigerians. He promised “necessary repairs required to fix the economy”.
“The reforms we have initiated are intended to create a stronger, better foundation for future growth. There is no doubt the reforms have occasioned hardship. Yet, they are necessary repairs required to fix the economy over the long run so that everyone has access to economic opportunity, fair pay and compensation for his endeavour and labour,” he said.
Long Walk To New Wage
Discussions for a new minimum wage for Nigerian workers have been on for a while. The Minimum Wage Act of 2019, which made N30,000 the minimum wage, lapsed in April 2024. The Act ought to be looked into every five years to meet up with contemporary financial requests of workers.
President Tinubu in January set up a Tripartite Committee to negotiate a new minimum wage for workers. The board makes up the Organized Labour, representatives of federal and state authorities as well as the Organized Private Sector.
In any case, the board members neglected to agree on another realistic minimum wage for workers, constraining labour to pronounce an endless industrial action on Monday, June 3, 2024. Businesses were deadened as labour shut down airports, hospitals, national grid, banks, National Assembly and state assemblies’ complexes.
The labour unions said the present minimum wage of N30,000 can no longer cater for the wellbeing of a typical Nigerian worker, saying government ought to offer workers something monetarily realistic in tandem with current inflationary tensions, attendant effects of the dual policies of petrol subsidy removal and unification of the forex windows of the current administration.
Labour relaxed its strike on June 4, 2024 following confirmations from the President that he was focused on a wage above N60,000.
Both TUC and NLC leadership in this manner continued talks with the representatives of the Federal Government, states, and the Organized Private Sector.
On Friday, June 7, 2024, both sides (labour and the government) actually neglected to reach an agreement. While labour dropped again its demand from N494,000 to N250,000, the government added N2,000 to its underlying N60,000 and offered workers N62,000.
Both sides presented their reports to the President who is supposed to take or make a decision and send an executive bill to the National Assembly to pass a new minimum wage bill to be inked down into law by the President.
