Amid growing concerns over the lingering negotiations on the new national minimum wage for workers in the country, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has faulted the claim by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) that it stepped down deliberations on the proposals to enable President Bola Tinubu to make wider consultations on the issue.
The union argued that FEC stepped down the deliberations because it realized that it lacked the power to deliberate on the issue. It also described governors who are dragging their feet on the minimum wage as lawbreakers.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, who spoke to journalists shortly after last week’s FEC meeting presided over by President Bola Tinubu, had stated that the council decided to drop the minimum wage discussion from its agenda to allow the president to make wider consultations on the issue.
However, the Assistant Secretary of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Chris Onyeka, who spoke to THISDAY, said FEC lacks constitutional powers to consider the minimum wage. He also criticized the governors for “displaying total ignorance” regarding the national minimum wage issue.
Onyeka stated that it was wrong for the governors to assume that the national minimum wage should be negotiated at the state level. He emphasized that the minimum wage negotiations are a tripartite process involving labor, government, and the organized private sector. “The government is supposed to put their side in order, just as labor is also supposed to organize its side,” he said.
“If the government is telling us that they are having issues on their side, that shouldn’t be our problem. They should be able to meet and reconcile their positions and speak with one voice. Secondly, the FEC does not have the power to decide on the national minimum wage. So, I think that they realized that they did not have such powers. That was why they withdrew the memo.”
Regarding the way forward, Onyeka said that with the tripartite report before the president, “it is the duty of Mr. President to reach out to all the constituents and try to reach a consensus. Until that is done you can’t submit anything to the National Assembly.”
Reacting to the insistence by some governors that they would not be able to pay a higher minimum wage, the NLC scribe said that such governors were not being honest with their position. He also described the governors who defaulted in payment of the old minimum wage as lawbreakers.
Onyeka stressed that labor leaders alone should not be expected to take the defaulting governors to court, noting that the federal government ought to compel such states to implement the minimum wage law by applying the instrumentality of the law.
“The governors that are not complying with the payment of minimum wage are unwilling to pay. They are lawbreakers,” Onyeka stated. He further pointed out that governors have benefited from the hike in the price of petroleum products, the increase in electricity tariffs, and the devaluation of the naira. “All of them have benefited by increasing their salaries. The members of the organized private sector have increased their costs; so, the only people that have not increased their own price are the workers,” he said.
