The Federal Government on Thursday said a new minimum wage regime would come into effect on April 1, 2024.
The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Idris Mohammed, who disclosed this in an interview said the current N30,000 minimum wage would expire at the end of March 2024.
Mohammed said this on Thursday as an analysis of the 2024 –2026 Fiscal Framework budgets indicated that the Federal Government would spend N24.66tn on salaries in 2024, 2025, and 2026.
Following the removal of the fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu on May 29, 2023, the Federal Government agreed to pay N35,000 to each of its workers to cushion the effect of the subsidy removal.
But the organised Labour insisted that the N35,000 wage award was a temporary measure, adding that the minimum wage should be reviewed in 2024.
The Federal Government’s team and the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council on October 18, 2019, agreed on the implementation of the N30,00 minimum wage after months of negotiations.
However, Labour unions on Thursday confirmed that they had started a negotiation process with the Federal Government, adding that based on the country’s labour law, the minimum wage should be reviewed every five years.
The Nigeria Labour Congress National President, Joe Ajaero, recently said, “It is open knowledge that the review of the national minimum wage is a matter of the law which is expected to happen in 2024.”
On his part, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, said that the improved take-home pay was meant to replace the temporary palliative measure put in place by the government to ameliorate the hardship caused by the fuel subsidy removal.
