ABUJA — Indications emerged yesterday that the Federal Government and organised labour are heading for a showdown over a new minimum wage as the 6th meeting of the Tripartite Committee on the new National Minimum Wage, NNMW, ended in another stalemate.
However, at the resumed meeting yesterday, the government and the OPS added N3,000 to last week’s offers of N57,000, thereby raising their offers to N60, 000. “We anticipated what they are doing, we anticipated that they will come up with another gimmick because we have been telling them, break down what you are giving as an award, break it down the way we broke our own down.
“We are telling them that what they gave us in 2019 was N30,000. At that time, the value of N30,000 was $84. The source said the government team, as usual, pushed the Minister of State for Labour, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, to announce the N60,000 offer in the presence of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Budget.
‘’If we follow this very well, it changes the approach to governance. That is a situation where you don’t carry many people along.”On his part, the spokesperson of OPS, and Director-General of Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association, NECA, Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, insisted that the major concern of members of the OPS was job security, pending when the economy improves.
“According to the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, about 767 manufacturing companies were shut down and over 335 experienced distress in the country in the last three years.