ABUJA — President Bola Tinubu said yesterday he will consult with the 36 state governors and members of the organized private sector, OPS, before arriving at the figure that will be submitted to the National Assembly in the form of an Executive Bill as the new national minimum wage.
Recall that at the end of the tripartite committee meeting on the new national minimum wage, the government team and organized private sector offered N62,000 from the current N30,000 but Labour, comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, demanded N250,000 living wage.
“That memo was stepped down to enable Mr. President to consult further, especially with the state governors and organized private sector, before he makes a presentation to the National Assembly, and before an executive bill is presented to the National Assembly. ‘’As workers, we cannot be slaves or live in a slave camp in our country. The workplace is about tripartism. In the world of work today, the global practice is tripartism. That is the government, the employers and the workers.
‘’There’s a process and we don’t seem to be on the same page. There’s a process of the tripartite committee sitting to recommend the national minimum wage. “We cannot put a gun in somebody’s head and say, look, you have to do this, it’s tomorrow, you have to do it. It doesn’t work like that. Now, for us, and we have said it and we’ll say it again openly, the N62,000 the employers came up with was based on a premise.
“It’s the prerogative of the business to say this is what I want to do. So you don’t legislate it. It’s another tax which we are also going to contest.