New minimum wage: Labour presents report to Reps committee, insists on N30,000

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, on Monday in Abuja insisted on N30,000 as the new minimum wage to be paid to Nigerian workers.

Speaking at the public hearing, which had the Speaker, Rt. Hon Yakubu Dogara and Deputy Speaker, Yusuf Lasun in attendance, President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba insisted that nothing short of the agreed N30,000 would be acceptable to the union.

The Labour leader described the sum of N30,000 as the compromise position of the tripartite committee while he expressed surprise at the N27,000 clause sent to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Wabba also urged the government to see workers as “partners in progress rather than seeing them as commodity”, noting that workers’ input to national development cannot be actually quantified.

“Mr. Speaker, Honourable members of the House Committee, it is high time government began to see workers as partners in progress rather than seeing us as commodities.

“I have a report of the tripartite Committee which agreed on N30,000 and another report which all the stakeholders agreed, and I hereby present the report.”

The NLC president added that the over 11 million families who depended on workers nationwide need the difference of N3,000, while urging the lawmakers to add the amount in order to end the conundrum.

Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and Governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdullaziz Yari was silent when asked to speak.

He merely presented his report to the committee and left the podium, though he later granted interview to newsmen outside the venue of the meeting.