President Bola Tinubu has approved N70,000 as Nigeria’s new minimum wage for workers.
Muhammad Idris, the minister of information, made the announcement in Abuja on Thursday.
The president signed the minimum wage report in the presence of the leaderships of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in the presidential villa.
READ ALSO: BREAKING: TUC, NLC Relax Industrial Action for One Week
Joe Ajaero, the NLC president, told journalists that the unions agreed to the wage benchmark because of state of the economy.
The government has also agreed with the unions that the period for minimum would now be shortened to three years from the current five years prescribed by the law.
This approval effectively ends the standoff between the Nigerian workers and the federal government over an agreeable minimum wage.
Fourteen months into Tinubu administration, the organised labour unions have went on industrial actions at least five times over minimum wage review largely because of inflation. This is in addition to the numerous negotiation fall outs, including public spats with the president and his appointees.
In the course of their discussions, the unions had proposed N1 million as minimum wage, then N615,500, N494,000 and later reduced it to N250,000.
All along, federal government kept rejecting the proposals on the basis that it could not sustainably afford it. It insisted it could only pay N60,000. After criticisms, the government increased it to N62,000.
READ ALSO: Ajaero: NLC May Propose Over N1m as Minimum Wage
State governors sparked another round of controversy when they unanimously said on June 7 that they would not able to pay N60,000 the federal government was proposing.
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