Trouble Ahead as FG Says Buhari Yet to Decide on Minimum Wage

Labour: Agreement not subject to review States seek power to legislate on pay cheque Atiku tasks president to keep promise to workers

Relief felt by Nigerians following the agreement among organised labour, organised private sector and the federal government over the new minimum wage dispute, which averted last Tuesday’s scheduled nationwide strike might turn to despair as the federal government said yesterday that President Muhammadu Buhari was yet to accept the recommendation of the National Minimum Wage Committee, which recommended N30,000 as

the nation’s least pay cheque.

Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, stated the government’s position while speaking to State House correspondents in Abuja, explaining that the committee’s report submitted to the president on Tuesday was a recommendation that would still have to be considered by the president for final decision.

"I think it (N30,000) was a recommendation. Mr. President will consider it and will make his views known in due course,” he said.

Mohammed’s comment immediately put the nation on edge as organised labour, which said the agreement was immutable, threatened a resumption of hostility even as the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, urged Buhari to fulfill his promise of granting a fresh minimum wage to workers.

The committee had following the meeting held on Monday adopted and recommended N30,000 as the new minimum wage

to the president.

Buhari while receiving the report said he was committed to giving the workers a new minimum wage.

He also promised to send a bill to the National Assembly on the new minimum wage.

But indications that the federal government might have been under pressure not to endorse the recommendation emerged yesterday when an anonymous statement credited to the presidency first appeared in a national daily, saying Buhari did not endorse N30,000 as widely reported.

This was given a fillip by Mohammed while answering questions from journalists in the Presidential Villa after the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in the State House.

Mohammed had said that Buhari had received the recommendation, adding that he would consequently consider and take a decision on it.

He said, "I think it (N30,000) was a recommendation. Mr. President will consider it and

will make his views known in due course,” he said.

Asked further to make his comment clearer, Mohammed said, “I said a recommendation was submitted. Mr. President will get back to the committee after he has studied the recommendation.”

The minister was also asked on whether the revenue sharing formula would be reviewed to enhance the states' ability to pay.

Responding, he said, “Once again, like I said, a recommendation has been made and in responding to the recommendation, all these views will be taken into consideration.”

Responding to the government, the organised labour warned it not to precipitate crisis as workers would not accept any attempt to alter the N30,000 proposed new minimum wage.

The Nigerian Labour Congress ( NLC) General Secretary, Mr. Peter Essom, who spoke to THISDAY on telephone last night, said organised labour would insist on the sanctity of the agreement at the tripartite

negotiations, which settled for N30,000.

He said, "The committee has recommended N30,000 and we as labour stand by that recommendation. The mandate we have from our people is that the N30,000 is even a very serious compromise that we had to make, taking all things into consideration and that we will not accept anything below that N30,000.

"So the recommendation of the committee is N30,000 and we expect the president to do the needful and transmit that to the National Assembly for legislation. If any attempt is made to start tinkering with that figure, which is already a major compromise we will not be receptive to it and that will, not likely to be conducive to industrial peace."

States Seek Power to Legislate on Pay Cheque

Meanwhile, state governments have started to explore more revenue sources to deal with the impending pay

increase, THISDAY has learnt.

THISDAY gathered that with the proposed new minimum wage for Nigerian workers, the governors have intensified efforts at seeking ways of shoring up internally generated revenues through taxes and other income earning ventures.

The governors, it was learnt, are also demanding for reforms to give states more powers to legislate on minimum wage.

Speaking yesterday at the National Internally Generated Revenue (IGRR) Peer Learning event in Abuja, the Governor of the Kwara State, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, said the current situation in the country calls for sub-nationals to increase the revenue generating capacities, stressing that it is clear that the new minimum wage is coming with an added responsibility and that the current revenue profile was not likely to carry it on as such.

"I think that in as much as we are looking at the minimum wage issue, which of course we feel is imperative at this time, it

should also be looked at alongside the capacities to generate revenue," he said.

He said the peer review platform is an opportunity to explore how best practices can be benchmarked across all states with a view to increasing their capacity to generate revenue.

On the internally generated revenue of his state, the governor disclosed that his state had achieved growth in its average monthly Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from N600 million in 2015 to N2.2 billion at the first quarter of 2018.

Ahmed said that the state was in 2014 confronted by difficult economic challenges on account of significant drop in generated revenue and development in the global economy which impacted its revenue negatively.

He said that in that year, the defunct Kwara State Board of Internal Revenue (BIR) was averaging about N600 million, which was incapable of augmenting allocations to pay salaries or fund the state infrastructure.