The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has warned governors against rejecting the earlier N60,000 minimum wage proposed at the Tripartite committee meeting.
The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) had kicked against the N60,000 minimum wage proposal, claiming that the amount is not sustainable.
“It simply means that many states will spend all their Federal Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) allocations on paying salaries, with nothing left for development purposes,” the NGF had said
But reacting to the development, the Head, Department of Information, NLC Benson Upah said on Monday in Abuja that the claim was “mischievous”, noting that it was a deliberate attempt by the governors to ignore financial responsibility.
He said, “The governors driving this mischief, we know them. These governors do not mean well and they are throwing spanners to the works while the federal government has moved up slightly to N62,000, they are saying they can’t pay the N60,000 earlier proposed.
“It is an act of mischief and the numbers have moved against them. It is a clear fact that what they shared from FAAC has moved from N700bn to N1.2trn and climbing. The states are very rich now.
“They have cornered everything, the legislative powers, judiciary powers, local government and even the police and army. But they can’t get away with this one.
“The issue is not about labour being difficult, but labour is talking about something practical, testable and reasonable. The rage of labour would be easier to manage than the rage of Nigerians. If they push Nigerians to the point that they would have to live the life of a jungle, we would all become victims” Upah said on Arise TV monitored in Lagos
Speaking further, Upah noted that the strike was relaxed in “good faith”, stating that a joint National Executive Council meeting of the NLC and her sister congress Trade Union Congress (TUC) will determine the way forward.
“We acted in good faith by pausing this strike action, it was not as if we did not know that this could arise. At the joint NEC of the TUC and NLC, someone asked what if the government acted in bad faith and the response was that our troops, resources, reaction time, and good intentions are intact.
“But the government is not serious, what we are asking for is not Maggi cubes per se, even as the cubes should not be taken lightly now given our precarious position.
“The appropriate organs of labour would meet, and take an appropriate decision. But the government needs to sit up, be serious and have to do a self-introspection. To see where the issues are, in our estimation, the issues do not lie with wages but with government profligacy.”
Also, reiterating organized labour’s demand for N250,000 the NLC Assistant General Secretary, Chris Onyeka, said the one-week grace period given to the Federal Government on June 4 would expire at midnight on June 11, 2024.
Onyeka warned that if the government and the National Assembly fail to meet the workers’ demands by then, organized labour would reconvene to determine the resumption of the nationwide strike.
“We have never considered accepting N62,000 or any other wage that we know is below what we know can take Nigerian workers home, we will not negotiate a starvation wage” Onyeka said on Channels Television
Recall that organized labour relaxed the nationwide industrial action in what was described as “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s commitment to a higher national minimum wage above the N60,000 earlier proposed
