FG in Dilemma As 10 States Offer NLC Higher Minimum Wage

 

Plateau State leads with a minimum wage offer of N57,000, followed by Abia with N42,000, Jigawa N32,000, Nasarawa N31, Kano N30,000, Gombe N28,000, Borno 27,000, Bauchi N25, Adamawa N23,000 , Ondo N22,000, Taraba N20,000. 

Enugu and agree to pay whatever Southern states will pay

Every effort by the Federal Government to prevent the incoming strike by the organized Labour unions, appears to have come to a standstill following a shocking revelation by the NLC that more than 10 states have offered to pay more than the N24, 000 minimum wage proffered by the Government.

It should be recalled that the joint union rejected a final meeting by the government to adopt a new minimum wage of N24, 000 agreed upon by the government. The NLC had said tt would not accept the offer made by the government and have adopted N30,000 as the new minimum wage for all Nigerian workers.

“We will never attend any further meeting for the purpose of negotiating or debating another national minimum wage having agreed on N30,000 last month with the federal government,” Mr. Uche Ekwe, Head of International Relations of the NLC, told Vanguard on Monday.

“We have concluded all matters related to new national minimum wage and if the politicians are unwilling to pay that basic minimum but continue to connive and work against the interest of the Nigerian workers they should hold themselves accountable for that and leave out of any meaningless meeting,” Ekwe said.

When pressed further on how the organized union could talk of any agreement when the government had not entered into any with them, the labour leader said some state governors and federal officials were working to truncate the former minimum wage agreed upon with the union.

Ekwe, who brandished a document showing what the respective states in the country offered to pay in writing during the tripartite negotiations, denied the claims by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum that they could only pay a paltry N22,500 as minimum wage.

The top labour official indicated that no fewer than ten of the 36 states had offered to pay wages much higher than what the federal government was tabling as new wage and warned that there would be no peace in the country until the N30,000 was adopted as the new benchmark.

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