The President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Festus Osifo, has asserted that ₦250,000 is the ideal minimum wage for workers in Nigeria.
Speaking at the inaugural Annual Convention of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Women Commission in Abuja on Tuesday, July 9, 2024, Osifo reaffirmed the position of organized labour on the minimum wage issue.
He clarified that negotiations for the new minimum wage have not been abandoned and that discussions between the government and organized labour are ongoing. Osifo said, “The minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead. The 2019 minimum wage (that has expired) took about two years to see the light of day. We started the negotiations in 2017.
“We promised you when we started in January (this year) that we will ensure this one is fast-tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were in 2019 which took two years.”
He explained that labour’s current silence on the matter is to allow President Bola Tinubu to complete his consultations with relevant stakeholders. Osifo stated, “So where we are today, we submitted the divergent position in June, when we did that you know clearly that Mr. President came out to say that he wanted to consult across the board which is the governors, Local Government chairmen, organised private sector, and labour, so we are doing some level of reach-out and conversations.
“So that what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor, so for the fact that in the media we are not shouting, we are doing some level of internal work so that this bill will be submitted in earnest soon. We still insist on the ₦250,000 benchmark as the ideal minimum wage,” he said.
