There is no foreclosure yet on the issue of the national minimum wage as President Tinubu may have created a window to take another look at the recommendation of the Tripartite Committee on the matter which is N62,000.00 but rejected by the organised labour

The President says he wants to consult the governors and the organised private sector on the matter creating doubt on the inputs of the two bodies in deciding the Tripartite Committee’s recommendation of N62,000.00. The Governors Forum and organised labour are an integral part of the Tripartite Committee.

The latest decision is an indication that the last word may not have been heard on the issue of national minimum wage. Organised labour has remained insistent on N250,000.00 as the new minimum wage but the government and private sector have argued that paying such an amount will lead to massive disengagement of workers.

Organised labour had also argued that as members of the Tripartite Committee, it never agreed to the N62,000.00 proposal as presented to the federal government. It also called on President Tinubu to use his power to alter the proposal upward reminding him that President Buhari did a similar thing in 2019 when a proposal of N27,000.00 was presented to him and he used his prerogative to raise it to N30,000.00 which was sent to the National Assembly as an Executive bill.

The Federal Executive Council stepped down the reports on the minimum wage for President Tinubu to have another engagement with the state and local governments across the country. Speaking after the FEC meeting today, Minister of Information and National Orientation Mohammed Idris explained that the decision was to ensure that the president consults with other relevant stakeholders before submitting the federal government’s final proposal to the National Assembly.

The minister explained that the report submitted by the tripartite on the new minimum wage did not include the positions of the state governments, and the private sectors, as it only projected the position of the federal government: “I want to inform Nigerians here that the Federal Executive Council deliberated on the report of the tripartite committee on the new national minimum wage,” the minister said.

“The decision is that because the new national minimum wage is not just that of the federal government, it is an issue that involves the federal government, the state governments, local governments, and the organised private sector and of course, including the organised labour. “That memo was stepped down to enable Mr. President to consult further, especially with the state governors and the organised private sector, before an executive bill is presented to the national assembly.

“So, I want to state that on the new national minimum wage, Mr. President is going to consult further so that he can have an informed position because the new national minimum wage, as I said, is not just an issue of the federal government. It affects the state governments, local governments, and the organised private sector. That is why it is called the national minimum wage. It’s not just an affair of the federal government.

“So, Mr. President has studied the report and is going to consult wider before a final submission is made to the National Assembly.”

It will be recalled that organised labour and the federal government have been in back-and-forth talks over the review of the minimum wage. The Minimum Wage Act of 2019 states that the current N30,000 minimum wage would expire after 5 years, which was April 2024, leading to the current demands of the workers to get a new payment that complies with economic realities.

Earlier this year, President Tinubu set up a tripartite committee comprising organised labour, the representatives of federal and state governments, as well as the Organised Private sector, to negotiate a new minimum wage. The organised labour proposed N615,000 to the committee, but the parties could not agree on a new realistic fee.

Due to the committee’s failure to reach an agreement on the new wage, organised labour declared an indefinite strike on Monday, June 3, 2024, resulting in the closure of all businesses, airports, the national grid, and national assembly complexes.

After two days of industrial action, the federal government met with the labour leaders with the promise that the new minimum wage would be reviewed upward above N60,000. The union relaxed the industrial action to meet with the government, where they reduced their demands from 494,000 to 250,000, but government representatives only added 2,000 to the previous 60,000 to make 62,000 in the report submitted to the president.

However, the state governors, under the aegis of the Nigeria Governors Forum, have insisted that they cannot afford to pay the initial N60,000 proposed by the tripartite committee.

Although the president promised the workers on June 12 in his Democracy Day speech that he would not hesitate to send the executive minimum wage bill to the National Assembly, the narrative is now changing.