Hammering out a new minimum wage deal will not be easy despite the enthusiasm and willingness of the federal government to pay workers a living wage. The 37-man tripartite committee set up since January to secure the deal has made very heavy weather of the negotiations. They now have barely a month to determine by how much they hope to supersede the current minimum wage of N30,000, which has lasted much longer than anticipated. Organised labour is asking for N615,000 monthly pay for workers; but they know full well that they cannot get it, not even if they embark on one-year industrial unrest. The federal government has not given a specific response, but governors, who are members of the wage committee and important stakeholders, have suggested that they would only agree to a wage increase they can pay sustainably. Already, they struggle to pay the appallingly unrealistic current minimum wage, while many states still owe their workers.
If negotiations were not stalled, or did not suffer hiccups, a deal should have been reached in less than four months. Though the government has promised to backdate the deal to April, and administration spokesmen are curiously optimistic about reaching a deal acceptable to all, organised labour and observers have decided to keep their fingers crossed. The unions have a concrete case by indexing their demands to inflation rate, and the federal government, despite organised labour’s skepticism about state governors’ priorities, is a little more wary about its capacity to meet union expectations. Nothing at the moment suggests the governments can go as high as a quarter of the N615,000 demanded by the unions, but perhaps the federal and state governments have a joker they are keeping close to their chests. May 2024 will, therefore, be tough, and June harrowing. Hopefully industrial unrest can be averted. But if not, whatever deal is secured by ‘arm-twisting’ will be, in the words of the governors, difficult to implement.
The unions insist that if employers, particularly governors, reorder their priorities, states should be able to pay the living wage eventually agreed. But what of private sector employers, many of whom are struggling to stay afloat and have had to cut staff and rationalise costs? It is unclear the unions will have a ready answer to this dilemma, especially in view of their proposal that any organisation which employs five workers and above should pay the new minimum wage. Tough time lies ahead, both for the government which has struggled to rein in expectations and the unions which have exuberantly raised expectations. Costs are rising, inflation is raging with unabating severity, and the general economy, not minding the reeling global economy, is in dire distress. Before June, the situation will be much clearer, whether a deal is reached and can be reached or not.
One of the reasons for the troubled relationship between the government and the unions, regardless of the NLC’s politicisation of union grievances in the past few months, is the abnormal structure of the Nigerian polity and economy. Until the country’s structural imbalance triggered by the 1966 coup d’etat is corrected, the recurring wage disputes and other battles between the government and organised labour will not abate. Quite apart from the dangers of NLC immersing itself in politics and diluting as well as distorting its raison d’être, the problem with the stalled wage negotiation is actually not the salaries demanded or the ability of states to pay. The problem is that more than five decades of running the country along stifling unitary lines unattenuated by democratic governance have imposed gross inefficiency and waste upon the system and produced a slew of unimaginative governing elite. The problem is worsened by a sense of entitlement which a section of the ruling elite has adopted as its philosophy.
Until the country is politically recalibrated and economy restructured in line with federalism to put an end to the command and unitary Nigerian structure, the federal, state and local governments will always assemble in Abuja every month to share revenue. Revenue allocation is an abominable system that encourages inefficiency, indolence, sense of entitlement, and warped politicking. Since the various tiers of government will always have a pool of money to share, there will be no incentive to elect a competent president, governor or local government chairman. Worse, the worst kind of lawmakers will populate the parliament, and servile and groveling judges will be appointed to subvert and pervert the justice system. The current Nigerian structure is not working, is unworkable, and no matter how much tinkering it is subjected to, will still not work. If the current administration can muster the courage to do something about the structure and build a consensus across the regions, it may be possible to redress decades of inefficiency and wrongs that have skewed the economy and impoverished the country. In his contributions to the debate on minimum wage, former Edo State governor and one-time labour leader, Adams Oshiomhole, suggested that the unions must look beyond the single objective of getting wage adjustment to advocating policies and programmes that would promote sustainable wealth creation and conduce to industrial harmony and peace. The Edo North senatorial district representative can’t be righter.
The current set of labour leaders falls far short of the example set by the Sen. Oshiomhole set, but they have and are pursuing a justifiable cause. They may lack depth and substance, and have little understanding of the nexus between peace and development, seeing how they are fixated on their singular goal of either winning political office or simplistically pursuing wage adjustment with little understanding of its dynamics, yet they have the public on their side. If a deal is not reached this month, and inflationary pressures continue to hammer Nigerians, the public will likely rally behind labour. However, the silver lining is that Nigeria has a president who understands the issues and possesses the boldness to implement reforms and redirect the system. If he gets the national cooperation he needs, and can buy time with a fairly amenable wage deal, he will probably leave the country far better than he met it despite years and tons of vilification.
