THE Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Taiwo Oyedele, has recommended an hourly minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
He suggested reconsidering the minimum wage’s structure and putting hourly labour as the basis for calculation.
Oyedele said this on Friday, June 28 edition of Channels Television’s Politics Today.
The tax expert also said that provided it did not interfere with their official responsibilities, civil officials should be permitted to work in other occupations other than farming while employed by the government.
He said this is the best time to have a rethink about the minimum wage structure.
“First and foremost, I do think it should be calculated per hour. And we need to relax some of the rules about civil service and what they can do. It should not just be limited to farming.
“You should be able to do more than one job provided that there’s no conflict and you can give the minimum hours to the government,” Oyedele said.
In addition, Oyedele pointed out that workers’ productivity needed to be a factor in determining the minimum wage.
He stated that even a N1 million minimum salary would soon become worthless and only be worth N30,000 in the absence of production and output.
He underlined the necessity of setting quantifiable productivity goals for employees since this would increase overall government revenue.
Oyedele also claimed Nigeria was facing a revenue problem and described the nation as a “poor country with the potential to be wealthy”.
He stated that the federal government and the states’ respective budgets were meagre when compared to those of other nations.
“By the way, the entire budget, that’s the federal government’s of about N29 trillion plus all the states in Nigeria about N15 trillion – if you add it all, it comes to about N44 trillion. That’s around $30 billion,” he stated.
He said by using data, intelligence, and technology, the nation could close the tax gap so that people who have not been paying before begin to pay and the poor people should be legitimately exempted, particularly nano, and micro businesses and low-income earners.
The NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) over the past months have consistently called for a rise in the minimum wage from N30,000.
Meanwhile, after much negotiation, labour settled for a N250,000 proposal while the federal government said it would pay N62,000.
The ICIR reported on Saturday, June 29, that the NLC rejected the attempt by Nigerian governors to take over the lingering minimum wage negotiations.
The workers union rejected the governors suggestions that they should be permitted to determine their workers wage, arguing that it was not only oppressive but against the idea of the minimum wage.
A reporter with the ICIR
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