This thing called ‘minimum wage’ in Kebbi

Like the African hungry child who sighted his mum coming home on a market day with a black nylon bag, Nigerians anticipated increase in the national minimum wage — the bench stipend employees should be paid after rendering their services since 2015 but the bill was just passed by the Federal House of Representatives In January, the Senate in March and got presidential assent on 18th of April this year.

Though some scholars and demand models kicked against minimum wage that there may be welfare and employment losses, it’s important to note that it’ll increase buying capacity, stop the exploitation of workers by employers and also help lowincome earners by increasing their standards of living, reducing poverty and boosts morale.

The race for minimum wage increase in Nigeria has always come with a crisis, agitations and protests since the late 1970s, making the military government ban labour union after the 1989/90 demands, but till date, the government is yet to come with definite terms to address this issue without pressure from labour groups.

In Kebbi however, while the new minimum wage is supposed to project, 66.67% increase for all workers between levels 1 and 6, 29% for 7 to 14 and 24% for 15 to 17, the increase does not include health workers while those earning less than N30,000 got an addition to aggregate the new minimum wage, those earning higher received mostly N7,000 or less, leaving the general public agape with the percentage increase that left primary school teachers and Local Government employees receiving zero increase.

In most organisations in Kebbi, the working time is 8 hours a day and 5 times a week which simply implies that, for every workday, even if the new minimum wage is applied to all workers, a low-income worker only gets N1500 a day before deductions to carter for food, shelter, transportation and other basic needs for himself and where applicable his family. This is the type of ‘chicken change’ workers go home with after hours of selfless service but yet not all could get.

Could the reason behind this lag off by the Government of the Land of Equity be lack of sufficient resources, the solution herein is to cut salaries of political office holders humongous to that of civil servants, control prices and disengage ghost and dead workers? Even though, physical evidence abounds that the state, with its vast arable land, should have enough to carter for workers before federal allocation even with earnings from rice farming alone, the most lucrative business since after border closure.