The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has demanded N794,000 as the new national minimum wage for workers in Lagos, Oyo, and other South West states.
The chairperson of NLC in Lagos State, Funmi Sessi, made the demand on Thursday at the ongoing public hearing of the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage in Ikeja.
Sessi disclosed that the demand was jointly agreed on by all the members of the union in the Southwest.
However, the organised labour in Taraba and Gombe state proposed a N60,000 new national minimum wage, while those in Bauchi and Adamawa are demanding a 50 per cent increase in the current N30 thousand naira minimum wage.
On their part, members of the Nigeria Labour Congress in Borno and Yobe state, said they will accept whatever the presidential tripartite committee on the national minimum wage come up with.
Speaking at the hearing of the committee, which was held in Yola, the Adamawa state capital, Joe Ajaero, the president of the NLC, called for a market survey before the workers would reach a consensus on the new minimum wage.
Meanwhile, governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi state has commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu over the setting up of the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage.
Bala Mohammed who was in Yola on Thursday, March 7, for the north-east zonal public hearing of the committee, said the committee is a bold step towards addressing the nation’s wage policy need.
“We praise Tinubu for the courage to set up this committee. Not many will accept this as a task that must be done,” the Bauchi state governor said at the event in the Banquet Hall of the Government House Yola.
He said mass suffering is a clear reality and that a realistic minimum wage is a vital way to minimise it.
On January 30, 2024, Tinubu inaugurated a 37-member panel on the new minimum wage in the Council Chamber of the State House in Abuja.
Organized labour and the Federal Government have been negotiating a new minimum wage for workers given the current economic hardship in the country.
