Reports say the Nigerian Labour Congress has relinquished its demand for a new national minimum wage of ₦494,000. Instead, they have agreed upon ₦100,000 as discussions ensue within the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage, scheduled for daily meetings over five days to forge a consensus.
Earlier, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Wale Edun, the Minister of Finance, to produce the cost implications of the proposed new minimum wage. Organised labour faced criticism for their initial demand of ₦494,000, deemed outrageous and unrealistic.
A senior NLC official confirmed that while the final proposal is yet to be formally presented to the tripartite committee, they intend to advocate for a minimum wage of ₦100,000.
He stated, “Today’s (Tuesday) meeting was essentially to set an agenda and plan how to complete the assignment within the five days.
“The government representatives did not mention a raise in the N60,000. They just set the agenda on what to do and how to go about the negotiation. There was no mention of any increment. But labour planned to close the negotiation on N100,000 minimum wage.’’
The Deputy Head of NLC Political Commission, Prof. Theophilus Ndubuaku, stated that the purpose of the Tuesday tripartite meeting was to draw an agenda for the daily meetings.
“We met today (Tuesday) to draw up an agenda for the one-week daily meeting. We met today and drew the agenda because the agreement was that we meet daily for the meet one week and on our own, we said we are relaxing the strike not even suspending it.
“It’s more like putting everybody on red alert. It means we are not going to give any notice. Which means by this time next week, we are going on strike. There is a difference between relax and suspend. Relax is to stay on your duty post and put your hands on the trigger. It is tomorrow (today) that we are expecting the government to submit another proposal,’’ he explained.