THE negotiation between the Federal Government and the Nigeria Labour Congress for a new national minimum wage experienced some tipsy toughy turns and bristled twists in the week that just ended with the President reportedly asking for more time for some wider range of consultations. Strange and worrisome indeed!
That anticlimactic suspense from the president and the Federal Executive Council, FEC came at a time when workers across the country were eagerly waiting for a formal announcement of the agreed minimum wage with implementation date clarified, following months of back and forth negotiations over monthly remuneration figures for workers across the country.
That coming from a president who had in his electioneering campaigns promised Nigerian workers living wage, largely perceived as being a more remunerative package than a minimum wage goes to confirm the position expressed in Mario Cuomo’s famous quote to the effect that most politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose and we all so often come to the realization that prose explains, sometimes apologetically and pathetically while poetry sings entreatingly highfalutin tunes. Some of us were still struggling to come to terms with that turn of events when another symbolic twist emerged with the Southern Governors’ forum asking that whatever negotiation structure that currently exists be dismantled at the federal level for state governors to commence fresh minimum wage negotiation process at their various states. What an intrigue!
This, the Dapo Abiodun-led forum with Prof Charles Soludo as vice chairman reasoned will enable the governors who will largely be at the implementation end of the negotiation to ‘realistically’ impute what they have the capacity and economic resource base to implement.
Organised Labour has since described this as an anti-people stance, noting that wage negotiation should be centrally done for there to be a nationally agreed and legislated benchmark below which no State is expected to fall. Beyond being a twist, this appears to be some form of a grand conspiracy to orchestrate delay and if possible frustrate the legitimate demand by Labour for upward wage review in line with the economic realities of our time. According to the leadership of NLC, the concept of a national minimum wage is not and should not be arbitrary but represents a national wage floor, a baseline below which no worker in the law should be paid, insisting that this threshold should be a collective agreement that ensures minimum standard, Labour has called on the Federal Government to guide against blackmail or being boxed to a corner. There is an urgent need for a national minimum wage which should be agreed on and legislated upon. That however does not in any way foreclose the flexibility of States coming out with their individual implementation template. It is however in line with global best practices that there be centrally agreed benchmark. Anything short of that is a resort to arbitrariness.
It is now six clear months since President Tinubu set up a tripartite committee to negotiate a new minimum wage for workers. The committee was made up of organized labour, representatives of the federal and State governments as well as representatives of organised private sector, OPS. That no significant progress has been recorded by the wage negotiation committee in the past six months speaks volume about the apparent lack of the political will to have the lots of the average Nigerian worker change for the better. The cost of living malaise has reached break up crisis point across the country even as households can no longer provide for their upkeep in terms of food and medications. It has become a rather sad but recurring show of shame that people die in the hospitals and the hospital authorities refuse to release their bodies until relations are able to pay up accrued medical bills. The citizens have become restive, including of course the workers whose total monthly earnings cannot put food on the table. The tariffs are steadily on the rise while poor economic policies of the federal government have resulted in galloping inflation and devaluation of the national currency, the Naira. After the twin policies of the removal of subsidy on petrol and the unification of the forex windows by the Tinubu led federal government, the persisting inflationary pressures have made it such that a minimum wage of N30,000 has become way out of the realities of the survival exigencies of the average worker.
We should put the current intrigues behind us and address the urgency of what is behind the worsening trend of brain drain. We must appreciate the fact that if as a nation, we are only prepared to pay peanuts, we can only have frustrated and despondent monkeys to contend with as workers while those with globally competitive skills will surely leave to join the workforce building the economies of other nations. No amount of revert to the old national anthem can imbue patriotism into a despondent national workforce. It will be a costly mistake on the part of the federal government to present to organised labour another opportunity to call out workers on strike. The last time labour embarked on strike to drive home it’s demand for and upward review of a national minimum wage, the domestic Airports Cargo Agents Association, DACAA put Nigeria’s loss at the Airports alone at N7 billion. The earning of the average Nigerian worker became grossly of low value in the face of the inflationary push that followed Mr president’s flimsy removal of subsidy on petrol.
That is well over one year ago and the Nigerian worker has been operating under this unprecedented federal government imposed burden. Many families have crumbled while many children who should be in schools are currently on the streets and many others are making desperate moves to escape to other countries in what has come to be known as japa syndrome.
Leadership at various levels should identify and block areas of wastes and corruption while motivating genuine contributions to economic growth through enhanced payment of living wage to workers. There is also an urgent need to identity dead woods and ghost workers and have them pruned down for the system to function more efficiently.
