By Tony Ademiluyi

Going down historical lane, the battle for a fair wage for the Nigerian worker has been a long drawn one since the colonial era.

Historians will recall that there was a nationwide strike in 1945 shortly after the Second World War which was led by the legendary Pa Micheal Imoudu arguably Nigeria’s greatest trade unionist and ably supported by Nigeria’s foremost Nationalist, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who used his Zik Group of Newspapers to advance the cause of the workers and even suffered an assassination attempt by the then colonial masters as he wrote in his biography ‘My Odyssey.’

Since then, there has been a cat and mouse relationship between the ‘leaders’ and the governed on the thorny issue of minimum wage.

According to Elizabeth Ibe in a published article on the CA-CD blog, ‘the first National Minimum wage law was enacted in 1981, at ₦125 per month. Starting from ₦125 in 1981, the minimum wage has seen several revisions to reflect the country’s economic changes and labor demands. Subsequent increment occurred in the year 2000 to ₦5500, and in 2011 it increased to ₦18,000 under President Goodluck Jonathan, and in 2019 it was increased to ₦30,000 by President Muhammadu Buhari. In this year 2024 there is a demand for increment to fit the current realities of the economy.’

There was a back and forth for some months between the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and the Federal Government over what will constitute the new minimum wage for the Nigerian worker.

The NLC initially pegged it at one million naira before reducing it to six hundred and ninety-two thousand, then four hundred and ninety-four thousand, then two hundred and fifty thousand before settling for the current seventy thousand naira. On the other hand, the federal government pegged it at fifty-four thousand naira before coming up to sixty-two thousand naira and then the compromise of seventy thousand naira.

At the signing of the new minimum wage into law, the labour leadership led by Comrade Joe Ajaero sang the praises of the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the consternation of some political analysts who saw it as been too obscene.

President Tinubu also promised a three-year review of the minimum wage going forward which is a huge relief to Nigerians to keep up with the exigencies of the times.

While I commend Tinubu for the new minimum wage, I urge the NLC to do more than just fight for an increase in the minimum wage to rather fighting for a living wage for the average Nigerian worker so that their wages can take them home if we are to win the war against corruption and graft. A living wage is a wage that can make the worker meet more than their basic needs while a minimum wage is just the barest minimum wage being paid to a worker. The advantage of the living wage is that it dignifies the worker by making them more than meet their needs which makes them eager to contribute their quota to nation building by way of working. It is better than a minimum wage which is a mere figure that may not necessarily meet the needs of the worker.

The NLC should be highly intellectual in its approach and should have a research team to come up with sound economic advice on how the value of the naira can be shored up, the gains of fuel subsidy removal can be felt by the workers through the government’s building of infrastructure. This could be done by way of building railways and a mass transit public transport system to reduce the cost of transportation, come up with pragmatic advice on how the government can win the war against insurgency. If the insurgency is tackled, the cost of food prices can be drastically reduced which will translate to gains for the Nigerian worker. They could also liaise with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group to come up with sound economic policies that can see our shut borders opened again, our naira strengthened, and the influence of the US Dollar in the Nigerian economy reduced so that the naira isn’t perpetually sabotaged.

The NLC’s research directorate is supposed to attract bright minds from the large numbers of graduates from the various Nigerian and even foreign universities.

It is not enough to have the wages merely increased; the NLC should also take into key consideration ways and means to increase the value of the wages been paid to workers as the current seventy thousand naira cannot still meet the needs of the Nigerian worker. A bag of rice is about eighty-two thousand naira which means that the minimum wage can’t even meet one of Abraham Maslow’s basic needs in the hierarchy of needs – food.

The cost of living in Nigeria is so high especially in the major cities like Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt that seventy thousand naira is at best a mere cruel joke as it cannot take the workers to the bus-stop let alone taking them home.

When you factor in other variables like rent, school fees, transportation fare, healthcare, childcare costs etc, seventy thousand naira is worse than a piddling as it will leave the worker not only at the mercy of Capitalist sharks but also make them susceptible to the hydra headed monster of corruption which is an ill wind that blows no one any good.

Rather than the NLC focusing on numbers in the next round of negotiations three years from now, they should focus on the value of the naira so that it is robust enough to make the workers live decent lives.

Let us cast our minds back to the good old days when the naira was at par with the British pounds and was even stronger than the American dollar. The NLC can focus its activities on giving useful advice to the policy makers to strengthen the naira to bring back those good old memories. This will be the real victory for the economically and psychologically battered Nigerian worker rather than just being Aluta conscious.

Three years will soon come like a flash in the pan; the earlier the NLC changed the focus of its direction, the better for the Nigerian worker. The time to focus is now!