The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has issued a stern warning to the National Assembly, threatening to shut down the country for a month in response to plans to deregulate the national minimum wage.
This threat comes amid ongoing negotiations for a new national minimum wage involving Organised Labour, the Federal Government, and the Organised Private Sector.
NLC President Joe Ajaero voiced the union’s strong opposition during the 67th Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association Annual General Meeting in Lagos. Ajaero stated, “As we are here, a Joint Committee of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Judiciary are meeting. They have decided to remove Section 34 from the Exclusive Legislative List to the concurrent list so that the state governors can determine what to pay you and so that there will be no minimum wage again. You cannot decide what you should earn.”
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Ajaero warned that if the House of Representatives and the Senate enact such a law, “they will be their drivers and gatemen, and there will be no movement for one month. We cannot accept any situation where the governors and the National Assembly members will foist a slave wage on workers and force poverty on the citizens. Organized Labour will not accept it.”
He further argued against decentralising wages, saying, “We don’t have a situation where people determine their wages that amounts to some level of illegality. In the constitution, there is a provision for equal work for equal pay. If we go into job analysis and job evaluation, we may discover that a clerk here may be doing the same work as the clerk in Sokoto.”
The NLC president also emphasized the International Labour Organization’s stance that wages should be governed by national laws, not sub-national entities. He highlighted that while some states pay above the minimum wage, others claim they cannot afford the proposed N60,000 minimum.
Ajaero condemned those who oppose the minimum wage, suggesting they are influenced by governors and acting in bad faith. “We have put our members on notice that if these people succeed in coming up with such an unpatriotic and obnoxious law, with this democracy they are playing with, we have enough in this country in terms of hardship,” he asserted.
He insisted that the NLC would resist any attempt to impose “slave wages” on workers. “Every worker in Nigeria across the country is seen as a Nigerian workers and any attempt to discredit them in a federation will first be resisted by the NLC,” Ajaero said, adding that governors should manage their states’ resources better rather than complain about their inability to pay.
Ajaero also highlighted the financial struggles of an average family of six living on N60,000 a month and noted that the NLC had proposed various measures that could have mitigated the impact of the removal of oil subsidies.
Meanwhile, the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Kingsley Chinda, confirmed that there is a proposal before the National Assembly Committees on Constitutional Review to move the minimum wage from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list. Chinda acknowledged the differing opinions on this issue, stating, “There is a proposal to move it to a concurrent list where states could legislate on labour matters.”
