President Bola Tinubu has approved N70,000 as the new minimum wage for workers in the country.
Tinubu announced the minimum wage during a meeting with leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress, TUC, at the presidential villa on Thursday.
The presidential aide, Bayo Onanuga disclosed this in a statement, noting that the President also promised to ways to assist the private sector and sub-nationals to pay the minimum wage.
He said the President also promised to review the national minimum wage law every three years.
“The Labour leaders applauded President Tinubu for the fatherly gesture as the President also promised to use his discretionary powers to meet the demands of university unions demanding unpaid four months salaries,” Onanuga said.
The minimum wage tussle has been ongoing for months, with the TUC and NLC bent on taking N615,500 as minimum wage, citing the high cost of living as reason.
On May 15, the NLC and TUC rejected a N48,000 minimum wage proposed by the federal government.
At the time, Joe Ajaero, NLC president, said the government was not serious about negotiating with the labour.
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“The government’s proposal of a paltry N48,000 as the minimum wage does not only insult the sensibilities of Nigerian workers but also falls significantly short of meeting our needs and aspirations,” the NLC president said.
On May 21, the federal government increased the proposed minimum wage to N54,000, which the labour again rejected and described as “unacceptable”.
The labour unions gave the federal government until May 31 to finalize the new national minimum wage fixing process.
However, the failure of the government to meet the deadline necessitated a two days nationwide total shutdown by the unions.
In a recent negotiation, the NLC and the TUC equally rejected the N60,000 proposed by the federal government as the minimum wage for workers.
“This is simply a case of if they go higher, we will go lower. They need to propose something reasonable for us to propose something lower too. There is no two-way about it.
“Also, we have a way of meeting as members of the Labour before each committee meeting. This will help us to take a uniform stand by the time we get to the meeting front.
“So as long as the government is ready to present something reasonable, we will meet them in the middle,” the labour leader said.
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