Minimum Wage: Labour Rejects FG Offer Of ₦62,000  May Resume Strike Tuesday

Nigeria’s workers union says it will not accept any ₦62,000 or ₦100,000 as the minimum wage for Nigerian workers.



Labour insisted on ₦250,000, its latest demand at the last meeting of the Tripartite Committee on Minimum Wage on Friday, as the living wage for an average Nigerian worker.



“Our position is very clear,” said Chris Onyeka, an Assistant General Secretary of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), on a live Television programme Morning on Monday.



He insisted that labour won’t accept the latest government’s offer of ₦62,000 and the ₦100,000 proposal by some individuals and economists.



Onyeka said, “We have never considered accepting ₦62,000 or any other wage that we know is below what we know is able to take Nigerian workers home. We will not negotiate a starvation wage.


“We have never contemplated ₦100,000 let alone of ₦62,000. We are still at ₦250,000, that is where we are, and that is what we considered enough concession to the government and the other social partners in this particular situation. We are not just driven by frivolities but the realities of the market place; realities of things we buy every day: bag of rice, yam, garri, and all of that.”


Onyeka said the one-week grace period given to the Federal Government last Tuesday, June 4, 2024, would expire by the midnight of Tuesday, June 11, 2024.


He said should the Federal Government and National Assembly fail to act on the demands of workers by tomorrow (Tuesday), the organs of the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) would meet to decide on the resumption of the nationwide industrial action relaxed last week.



The NLC Official said, “The Federal Government and the National Assembly have the call now. It is not our call. Our demand is there for them (the government) to look at and send an Executive Bill to the National Assembly, and for the National Assembly to look at what we have demanded, the various fact of the law, and then come up with a National Minimum Act that meets our demands.


After weeks of failed talks on a new minimum wage for workers in the country, Labour declared an indefinite industrial action on Monday, June 3, 2024. Businesses were paralysed as labour shut down airports, hospitals, national grid, banks, National Assembly and state assemblies’ complexes.