PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu has ordered the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, to present a template for the new proposed minimum wage within the next 48 hours.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, after a meeting between the President and government representatives involved in the minimum wage negotiations with organised labour.
“The President has directed the Minister of Finance to do the numbers and get back to him between today and tomorrow so that we can have some figures ready for negotiations with labour.
“Mr President is determined to go with what the committee has set. He is also looking at the welfare of Nigerians,” he said.
He added that the President directed the committee to work together so as to give Nigerians an “affordable, sustainable, and realistic” minimum wage.
“All of us will work together assiduously within the next one week to ensure that we have a new wage for Nigeria that is acceptable, sustainable, and also realistic,” he added.
The organised labour had declared a nationwide strike which started on Monday, June 3, after the federal government failed to meet its demand for a new minimum wage.
Although the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) earlier said the nationwide strike would continue despite the resolution reached with the federal government Monday night, The ICIR reported that the organised labour, comprising the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Tuesday, June 4 ‘relaxed’ the strike for one week following a joint extraordinary national executive council meeting of the unions.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, had summoned labour leaders to an emergency meeting following the strike action that crippled economic activities in the country on Monday, June 3.
The meeting produced a resolution co-signed by the president of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, his counterpart at the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Festus Osifo, the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, and the Minister of Labour, Nkiruka Onyejeocha.
At the end of the meeting, it was announced that the Federal Government had offered to pay higher than N60,000 minimum wage initially proposed.