Nigerian Govt, NLC Reject Governors’ N22,500 Proposal For Minimum Wage

    Nigerian Govt, NLC Reject Governors’ N22,500 Proposal For Minimum Wage

The dispute for the right figure for Nigeria’s new minimum wage has deepened as the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Mr. Chris Ngige, disclosed that the Federal Government has rejected the N22,500 minimum wage proposal by the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF).

Ngige made this known on Wednesday morning during a phone interview on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.

“The governors have not even done enough. I told them that this N22,500 is even rejected by the Federal Government,” he said.

Bear in mind that the nation’s 36 governors emerged from their meeting tuesday in Abuja and said they had agreed to N22,500 as the lowest pay cheque for workers.

But while the federal government is refusing to accept the amount, the country’s labour last night said that the governors’ offer was N7,500 short of its demand for N30,000, adding that it was an exercise in futility.

It warned that the strike scheduled for Tuesday next week would proceed as planned.

“The N30,000 figure is not adjustable,” Mr. Denja Yakubu, Assistant Secretary (Information), at the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) Headquarters, Abuja toldTHISDAY last night, that none of the tripartite stakeholders, including government, organised labour and organised private sector, could vary the figure he said had been agreed upon.

“We agreed to the N30,000 figure as the minimum wage at our last meeting. Sixteen of the governors were at the meeting, where the agreement was reached. Whatever they are saying now is a joke and self-deceit,” he said.