EDITORIAL: Minimum Wage Implementation And Delay Tactics

When President Muhammadu Buhari on the midday of Thursday April 18, 2019 signed the Bill for the approval of the N30,000 Minimum Wage into law, public expectation was rife that takeoff of implementation will be but a matter of weeks.

Both arms of the National Assembly had already passed the new minimum wage Bill into law, the House of Representatives in January and the Senate in March.

It however remains a development of curious concern that five months after the President had signed the Bill into law, implementation has yet to take off.

Even of more concern is that debates, negotiations and bulk passing on consequential adjustment in percentage implementation details appear to be lingering longer than necessary with no end currently in sight.

The Federal Government has openly blamed the delay in implementation on what it tagged “consequential adjustment of the N30,000 minimum wage and the unrealistic demand of labour unions’.

The position of Labour, which appears to be statistically logical is that the increase in the minimum wage from N18,000 to N30,000 is a 66% increase and that the same 66% increase should be reflected across board.

Opposed to the labour stand are members of the technical sub committee of the Relativity/Consequential Adjustment Committee set up by the Federal Government on May 14, 2019 to work out a template for the adjustment of the salaries of public servants.

The position of the Federal Government technical implementation committee is still a sad re echo of issues that were supposed to have been long settled by the Joint Negotiation Council, includING the ability of States and the Federal Government to pay.

The Federal Government’s consequential adjustment/salary implementation committee is said to be offering as low as 9.5% for workers within the salary grade levels 7-14 and 5% for those between 15 and 17.

We blame the leadership of the organized labour, NLC and TUC inclusive, for an untidy work done at the table of the Joint Negotiation Council.

Leaders of the Labour unions allowed themselves to be lured or hurried into signing a Memorandum of Understanding without spelt out details of implementation modalities.

By so doing, leaders of the organized labour unwittingly played into the hands of a Federal Government that has not demonstrated a convincing level of sincerity and commitment to the implementation of the minimum wage by the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission.

We consider the lingering delay and time buying tactics on the part of the Federal Government in the implementation of the Minimum Wage law, which are becoming more glaring by the day, as an ill contrived delay agenda with an inherent capacity to bring about a break down in the nation’s industrial/labour relations.

To still be going back and froth on details of implementation modalities in the name of consequential adjustment and relativity issues does not paint a convincing portrait of a caring and responsive Federal Government.

The Nigerian worker remains the least remunerated in the world, thereby negating the truism that a well motivated labour force can easily translate into an evidently productive workforce.

We desire to see more practical demonstration of the willingness to pay the N30,000 minimum wage.

This is far more important than the often trumped up argument of inability to pay.

We do also firmly believe that for the N30,000 minimum wage law to be effectively implemented across the three tiers of government, the existing revenue formula that is skewed in favour of the Federal Government (52.68%) should be reviewed.

26.72% for the 36 States and 20.60% for the 774 Local governments is antithetical to development.

While those issues are being addressed on the right platforms, the Nigerian workers in both the public and private sectors do not deserve any further delay in the implementation of the N30,000 national minimum wage five full months after President Mohammadu Buhari has signed it into law.