• Be considerate, reasonable, Anglican Primate tells government, labour
• NLC: Government should breakdown its offer like we computed our N615,000

Ahead of tomorrow’s minimum wage negotiation committee meeting where a new offer is expected to be tabled by the Federal Government, Organised Labour has asked the government to get serious, describing the earlier proposed N48,000 as a huge joke. It also dismissed reports that labour is settling for N100,000 as the new offer from the government.

There are also expectations that the government will review its earlier N48,000 proposal upward when it resumes negotiations with labour and other stakeholders on the new national minimum wage, on Tuesday.

At the last meeting of the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage, leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) walked out after the Federal Government offered to pay N48,000 as the new minimum wage. The Organised Private Sector, on the other hand, proposed an initial offer of N54,000.

However, the chairman of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage, Bukar Goni, in a letter to the organised labour for a meeting tomorrow indicated interest that the government will shift ground and asked the organised labour to also shift ground.

After their earlier stance to boycott the committee meeting, the NLC Head of Information and Public Affairs, Benson Upah, said the organised labour would honour the invitation tomorrow but advised the government to be serious.

He said: “We expect that the government should be serious this time around. We expect them to take more seriously the issue of wages of workers.” On whether labour would accept N100,000 as being insinuated, he said: “It will not be fair and these are the reasons. When we demanded N615,000, we broke that down. We used the barest minimum.

“For instance, we put accommodation for N40,000, we also used N500 for feeding, tell me where you are going to get food for N500 with a family of six. As I said, we used the barest estimate but beyond that, the government hiked electricity tariff by 250 per cent after we made our demand and that has introduced new costs and expenses. So, if the government is serious, it should not be thinking about N100,000.”

Also, the Primate of the Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, Most Rev. Henry Ndukuba, has advised the Federal Government to be considerate while labour should be reasonable in determining the minimum wage for workers. He tasked both parties with ensuring that the new minimum wage reflects the inflation rates and economic reality in the country.

Ndukuba stated this on Sunday at the Cathedral Church of Advent Life Camp, Abuja, while addressing journalists during his episcopal visit to mark the 2024 day of Pentecost. The Day of Pentecost marks 50 days after the Easter Day celebration and brings an end to the Easter season.

The cleric, while reacting to questions about the fruitless meeting between the Federal Government and organised labour a few days ago, called for dialogue to avoid future strikes by workers. He called for consideration on the part of the government and asked the NLC to be reasonable with its demands.

“With the inflation and situation in the country, where families do not know what to eat and how to provide for their needs, all we are asking is for the NLC and TUC to be reasonable in their requests and demands, while the government should be considerate.

“Somebody said it is the minimum wage for maximum suffering. By this, it means if we demand a minimum wage that will make inflation get out of hand, we will end up in maximum suffering. What NLC and TUC are asking for is for our good, and they need our support, but other aspects need to be put into consideration,” he said.

Explaining further on labour position, a member of the NLC delegation on the Tripartite Committee, Prof Theophilus Ndubuaku, said: “We will accept something that can at least keep somebody alive. I don’t think N100,000 will keep a worker alive in this country.

“In the private sector, even artisans are not taking N100,000 a month. Whatever we accept, we will look at the income, what are they collecting, and what is available to the government because if the government is collecting N1 trillion, we cannot ask them to pay N2 trillion.

“They have to tell us why they cannot pay N615,000, the onus is on them to tell us why, then we will sit down and say okay you don’t have the money but we also know why you don’t have the money because Nigeria is a country that is naturally endowed but something is wrong, how do you make sure you get the money so that when we come again in two years, you won’t tell us the same story?

“What are you doing to create wealth, how are you going to partner with us to create wealth instead of being wasteful? How are you going to partner with us to reduce the cost of governance? If a father comes home and says the only money he has is N1,000 and you know that the father is not wasting the money, you will manage, but if it is when the father comes and he is eating food bought from the fast food joint and it cost N10,000 and he gives N1,000 to the entire family to go and look for food and cook for themselves, the family may refuse it.

“The letter they wrote to us said that both parties should shift ground, which means they will shift ground and they are expecting us to shift ground but the question is, what ground are they shifting, are they going to shift ground by N2,000 to make it N50,000 or are they going to shift ground by N52,000 to make it N100,000 or by N150,000 or N200,000.

The point here is, this thing we are doing is not rocket science, the government should sit down and calculate how much it will cost, what is a befitting wage for an average Nigerian? They should break down what they are giving us because even in salaries, you break everything down.

“That N48,000 they are offering, they should have broken it down, so if there are certain things they don’t want to make provision for, for instance, health, if they say if any worker is sick the person should go and die or they don’t want to make provision for food, let them just put standard things.

“The problem here is that you asked someone to tighten his belt, you said there is no money, but you removed subsidy. Since they removed subsidy, FAAC has been collecting almost three times what they were collecting before subsidy. That money you are collecting, what are you doing with it?

“You now said you want to build coastal highway when the existing roads to the same location are not passable, you are budgeting trillions of naira, you want to build Lagos-Sokoto brand new Highway, you want to put billions for hajj subsidy, you bought 200 vehicles for Customs and this is somebody that is complaining that naira is having issues but you now want to spend hundreds of billions to import Toyota cars for Customs, why can’t you buy made-in Nigeria vehicles?

“This whole thing doesn’t make any meaning; we don’t even understand it. They are behaving as if they have money, but they don’t know what to do with it. But one thing you don’t want to do with the money is to feed Nigerians, feed your workers, make your workers comfortable.”