THE fuss about minimum wage continues to linger as the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) say they will not accept the N27, 000 national minimum wage approved by the National Council of State on Tuesday.

The National Council of State, which comprises past Nigerian presidents and military heads of state, however, retained the minimum wage for federal workers at N30, 000.

Bobboi Kaigama, President of the TUC, said, in an interview on Wednesday, that the organised labour will now engage members of the National Assembly and possibly have them endorse the N30, 000 minimum wage that had been recommended for workers at both the federal and state levels, by the tripartite committee set up by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Kaigama said, “If President Muhammadu Buhari takes the N27, 000 agreed by the National Council of State to the lawmakers, organized labour will provide necessary documents and agreements reached by the tripartite committee to lobby for N30, 000.’’

Similarly, Mike Ene, the NUT Secretary-General, expressed disappointment with the idea of N27,000 for state workers saying “it is unfair and needed to be addressed immediately because a worker is a worker everywhere in the country, either with the federal or state government”.

Ene further explained that the N30,000 only translates to a thousand Naira daily, insisting that the N30, 000 should go for all the workers across the country.

In January 9 this year, while inaugurating the tripartite committee on minimum wage, President Buhari noted that there was no doubt that the nation needed a new minimum wage to enhance the welfare of the Nigerian workers.

However, after the recommendation of a new minimum wage of N30,000, Abdulrazaqe Bello-Barkindo, spokesman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum criticised the development, saying that that state governors will not be bullied into accepting the N30,000 new national minimum wage.