Minimum Wage: Strike Begins In Five States, FCT As Panel Meets

Strike looms, barring any last-minute changes to the plan as state authorities have failed to negotiate the N70,000 new minimum wage payment.

Though the implementation panels set up by the concerned states have been meeting with labour leaders in a bid to ward off the strike action, the various state chapters of the Nigeria Labour Congress—the Federal Capital Territory, Cross River, Nasarawa, Ebonyi, Kaduna, and Zamfara states—have expressed their readiness to embark on a strike from today.

The FCT Council of the NLC had earlier directed the workers in the six Area Councils to embark on an indefinite strike on December 1 until further directives were issued.

This was contained in a letter signed by the Chairman of the FCT Council of the NLC, Stephen Knabayi, on Saturday.

This followed the directive of the NLC leadership to workers in 14 states and the FCT to embark on industrial action from Sunday over the non-implementation of the new minimum wage.

Knabayi faulted the failure of the area council chairmen to respond to the demand for the implementation of the minimum wage, despite receiving the communiqué of the National Executive Council of the NLC dated November 14, 2024.

The Nasarawa State chapter of the NLC on Sunday declared its readiness to declare a strike if the minimum wage was not paid.

He, however, revealed that the Nasarawa State government had reached an agreement with the union to pay N70,500 to the workers, adding that no document had been signed regarding the implementation.

He said, “We have notified all our members to embark on strike tomorrow (today) because of the non-implementation of the national minimum wage in the state.

“Although the minimum wage committee set up by the state government has agreed to start paying N70,500, no document has been signed to that effect up till this moment.

“So, we are observing the situation to see if the documents on the minimum wage will be signed before tomorrow morning. However, if nothing is done between now and midnight, our members will have to fully comply with the strike as they were directed.”

To avert a shutdown, the Kaduna State Government said it had commenced the implementation of the new national minimum wage, with the least-paid worker in the state receiving N72,000 as gross salary in November.

The Punch reports that many states agreed to pay above the N70,000 minimum wage, with Kaduna State offering its workers  N72,000 as the minimum wage.

Despite the positive development, the state chapter of the NLC confirmed its planned strike.

The state’s chairman of the NLC, Ayuba Suleiman, said the workers would embark on a strike as directed by the NLC leadership.

When asked if the NLC was prepared to embark on a strike, Suleiman replied, “Yes, we are set for the strike.”

However, a statement on Sunday by Ibraheem Musa, the Chief Press Secretary to Governor Uba Sani, insisted it was “a misrepresentation for the NLC to claim that the state has defaulted in the payment of the new minimum wage.”

Musa noted that the state government had complied with the letter of the National Minimum Wage Law.

“His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Kaduna State, Senator Uba Sani, has complied with the spirit and letter of the National Minimum Wage Law by paying the lowest paid civil servant N72,000 last month,” he said.

He added that the NLC had been pushing for consequential adjustments, but the state government argued that there was a difference between salary increments and the minimum wage.

However, he said with the implementation of the minimum wage, the monthly wage bill had increased from N5.4bn to N6.3bn, including N4bn deduction for loan payments every month.

This, he said, left only N2bn for rural transformation, healthcare, education, and other public services in the state.

“It will be unfair for Kaduna State Government to spend almost all its revenue on consequential adjustments after paying the mandatory minimum wage.

“There are over 10 million people who are also entitled to the accrued revenue of Kaduna State. There are 84,827 civil servants in the state. So, it is unreasonable for the government to spend over 90 percent of its revenue on just about one percent of the population,” he added.

Musa urged the NLC to exercise patience over the consequential adjustments, pending when the state government’s revenue improved.

“Governor Uba Sani is labour-friendly. He has demonstrated this by providing buses for civil servants to commute to work free of charge, as part of the palliatives to cushion the prevailing economic challenges,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the NLC in Ebonyi State, Dr. Oguguo Egwu, disclosed that the state workers had been directed to join the ongoing industrial action from today.

According to him, the warning strike, which will last one week, was a sequel to the failure of Governor Francis Nwifuru to implement the new national minimum wage.

He said, “Talking about the new national minimum wage as it concerns Ebonyi State, our governor on September 11 at the Ojiji festival of Izzi Kingdom announced the new minimum wage of N70,000 and we are all aware of that.

“We were very happy and excited that Ebonyi would be among the first states to implement the wage. But subsequently, there was no communication and no information.

“And we heard that the governor wanted to implement the national minimum wage without any due process of collective bargaining where both the workers and government angle would meet to agree on the consequential adjustment.”

Also, the Zamfara State NLC secretary, Ahmed Abubakar, said workers in the state had yet to receive the new minimum wage, and as such had no alternative but to join the strike.

He said, “We are going to join the strike as directed by the national body of our great union to express our anger over the non-payment of the new minimum wage.”

The organised labour in Cross River is set for an industrial action over the non-implementation of the new minimum wage in the state.

The Cross River State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Gregory Ulayi, disclosed that the union would embark on an indefinite strike if the state government failed to implement the new minimum wage to workers.

However, it was learnt that the state government reached an agreement with the state chapters of the NLC and TUC late on Sunday night to pay the N70,000 wage to its workers.

Calls to the NLC and TUC officials to clarify whether the state workers would still embark on strike were not answered as at the time of filing this report.