There is no agreement thus far on a new national minimum wage, barely a month after a Tripartite Committee set up for it began to deliberate seriously on the matter. It raises a spectre of uncertainty. This is further worsened by the governors’ rejection of the Federal Government’s N62,000 offer, amid the 7 June meeting of the committee with organised labour, which was deadlocked, yet again.
Such dissonance is undoubtedly unsettling. It is also distressing that the authorities in Abuja have remained silent over it. An insipid assurance by President Bola Tinubu that an executive bill will be forwarded to the National Assembly on the new national minimum wage without a consensual amount, does not soothe the nerves of either the organised labour or the governors.
From its high horse, labour finally came down to N250,000 from its original N615,000 demand. On the contrary, the Federal Government had moved from N48,000 to N54,000, then N58,000, and later N60,000, until it tacked at N62,000. The argument of the governors is that even N60,000 as a minimum wage is not sustainable and therefore will not fly, citing the lean financial resources of their states, competing demands and the indebtedness of many of them.
“It will simply mean that many states will spend all their allocations on just paying salaries, with nothing left for development purposes,” the NGF emphasised in its media statement. Some have argued that if a wage figure is forced on states, over 40 per cent of the.
