Governors Prevented Tinubu From Approving ₦100,000 Minimum Wage – Lagos NLC Chair

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Lagos Council, has stated that the reviewed National minimum wage of ₦70,000 for civil servants is unsustainable for its workers.

The state council Chairman, Funmi Sessi accused the Governors’ Forum of being responsible for the meager new minimum wage approval following their insistence on paying ₦50,000 during the negotiating period.

She called on Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to give special consideration to workers in the state when implementing the new minimum wage.

President Bola Tinubu had on Thursday, approved ₦70,000 new minimum wage during a meeting with the leadership of the organized labour in Abuja.

Reacting to the development, Lagos NLC, Chairperson expressed mixed feelings on the wage.

According to Sessi, “I would like to express a mixed reaction to the newly approved N70,000 minimum wage by the Federal Government in the sense that we believed, and we know that President Bola Tinubu would have done better than the approved N70,000.

“If not for the reactions of the Governors Forum, where the Governors insisted on N50,000, we believed President Tinubu’s approval would have been in the range of N100,000.

“But we still thank God that at the end of the day, we were able to move a little bit forward and achieve. There is an adage that says “he who fights and runs away, leave to fight another day.”

She continued, “Though, the N70,000 falls short of our expectations but we still thank God, at least we were able to push a little further than the N62,000 the government was proposing to pay because of the reactions of the governors and private employers as well.

“However, we hope with the N70,000 as a minimum we will still be able to live with living demands.

“We want to use this medium to appeal to government and all the agencies to monitor effectively the market forces because those rendering services and goods, this is the time they will be calculating how to increase the no services and goods that they have already increased since last year.”