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Tag: Ngige

  • Ngige explains absence at May Day rally

    Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige has explained that his absence at the May Day rally in Abuja had nothing to do with his faceoff with Labour over the headship of the board of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

    Ngige, who has had series of disagreement and altercation with Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) President Ayuba Wabba and other labour leaders was represented at Eagle Square venue of the May Day rally by his Minister of State, Prof Stephen Ocheni.

    The NLC president had in his remarks alluded to the fact that the minister was absent because of their disagreement over the NSITF board composition.

    But in a two-paragraph statement signed by his Special Assistant on Media, Nwachukwu Obidiwe,  the minister  said he was absent as a result of ill-health.

    The statement reads: “Contrary to uncivilised attitude and barefaced lies contained in the address of the President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba, I wish to state for the avoidance of doubt that the Hon. Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige was absent at today’s (yesterday’s) Workers’ Day rally for reasons of ill-health.

    “The minister has been down with flu since last Sunday. He met his doctors last Monday and has since been at home recuperating.”

    It was learnt that workers had planned to boo the minister if he showed up at the event.

  • You lied about NSITF board, NLC tells Ngige

    The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has accused the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, of refusing to inaugurate the  Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) board, headed by veteran labour leader Chief Frank Kokori because of his transparency, fearlessness and track records.

    The NLC said the minister planned to run the fund as a sole administrator.

    The umbrella labour union described the minister’s statement on national television as a tissue of lies.

    It stressed that Kokori was appointed to head the NSITF board as a member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) from Delta State.

    Reacting to a statement by the ministry that the NLC brought thugs to disrupt the inauguration of the board, NLC President Ayuba Wabba said Ngige’s alleged resort to foul language showed that he has something to hide.

    In a statement in Abuja, he said: “The attention of the NLC has been drawn to a statement by Rhoda Iliya, the Assistant Director, Press, on behalf of Dr. Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment, in which the President of the congress was alleged to have imported ‘violent thugs’ to disrupt the inauguration of the board of NSITF, which was to have taken place on April 18.

    “We are left dumbfounded at the depth Dr Ngige is prepared to go in lying to the nation and the world to cover up his doomed plan to hoodwink Nigerians on his elaborate intrigue spanning three years to prevent the inauguration of the NSITF.

    “The antics of the minister and his propensity for unabated obfuscation will not distract us from doing our duty in defending and protecting the rights and interests of our members, as these remain the basic raison d’etre for our existence as a labour movement.

    “To set the record straight, on April 18, NLC President Ayuba Wabba, alongside Comrade William Akporeha, President of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), led other leaders of the Labour Movement to the venue of the inauguration ceremony and waited patiently for well over two hours for the commencement of the event.

    “There were dozens of journalists from various national media houses in the hall to cover the event. The Department of State Services (DSS) also had its operatives on the ground as well as the police. The fact that there was not even a single reported incident of breakdown of law and order or the arrest of any person for unruly behaviour is a categorical attestation to the peaceful and calm manner in which all those who came for the occasion conducted themselves.

    “Secondly, the fact that the NLC has statutorily two members on the NSITF board, which, by law, it is obligated to nominate, means that the NLC President and all the other workers who turned up for the long overdue inauguration had every business to be there.”

    “We are, therefore, shocked with the deployment of derogatory and confrontational words by Minister Ngige. As social partners, we naturally expect the Ministry of Labour and Employment, and any of its directors and workers, to relate with organised labour guided by utmost dignity.”

  • African leaders must tackle underdevelopment, says Ngige

    Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige has urged African leaders to tackle underdevelopment on the continent.

    Ngige spoke at the Third Biannual Special Technical Committee on Social Development, Labour and Employment under the auspices of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

    He said if African leaders failed to develop their continent, Africans would remain hewers of wood and fetchers of water, stressing President Muhammadu Buhari had taken the lead in this direction.

    Ngige said the Buhari administration had made serious efforts in the last four years to chart a new course for  Nigeria  in core sectors of agriculture, anti-corruption, employment generation, infrastructural development and war on insurgency.

    He said the Buhari administration’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan was tailored towards a concurrent growth of Nigeria’s three-tier federal structures of national, states and local governments.

    The minister said the battered economy, which the administration met in 2015, slipped into recession in the first and second quarter of 2016, prompting  an aggressive recovery plan with emphasis on agriculture and food security.

    Ngige said “the effects were dramatic. We boosted agriculture and raised the capacity of the nation to feed herself, to the extent that importation of rice for example, dropped by 95 per cent. The same goes for sorghum. This decisive inward look was pivoted on the elastic efforts of government, which the Central Bank of Nigeria piloted through the Anchor Borrowers Programme in agriculture.”

    He noted that the government’s Home Grown School Feeding Programme had  been complementing its free education policy at the primary, and junior secondary school levels while stemming  school dropout which he identified as precursor to child labour.

    The programme he said had captured about 10 million school children in 25 states.

    He identified poverty, disease and ignorance as an evil triad that must be fought together, and gave insight into other social investment programmes, such as the N-Power under which the Federal Government had employed 500,000 graduates, N-Build where 50,000 are engaged, N-Agro, N-Knowledge, N-Health, and others.

    He told the gathering of the Government Enterprises and Empowerment  Programme, which makes interest-free loans available to small businesses  as well as the National Cash Transfer programme (Conditional and Unconditional) to over one million vulnerable and poor Nigerians, besides the thousands benefiting from similar programmes by National Directorate of Employment (NDE).

    Ngige said the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan would have been impossible without the anti-corruption measures, such as Treasury Single Account (TSA) and the whistle-blowing policy shutting down leakages and easing recovery of stolen funds.

    as well as the efforts of the anti-corruption agencies primed for zero-corruption agenda of the government .

  • Ngige seeks increased funding for Geneva Labour desk

    Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, has called for increased budgetary allocation for the Ministry and separate funding for the Geneva Labour Desk in the Ministry’s 2019 budget.

    The Minister, who spoke while defending the Ministry’s 2019 budget at the National Assembly, said that this became necessary as the Geneva Labour Desk lacked adequate personnel, structures and logistics befitting Nigeria’s enhanced status at the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

    He informed the lawmakers that “Nigeria is now on the governing board of the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland after ten years of exit” and appealed to them “to help return the Geneva Labour Desk as an independent line item in the Ministry’s budget breakdown”.

    Ngige also called for an upward review of the budget for the Skill Acquisition Centres for increased training opportunities for the Nigerian youths.

    The Minister equally solicited the revival of the Labour Advisory Council, which has been moribund for six years.

    “ILO encourages the establishment of the Council by member countries because it serves as an avenue for social dialogue,” Ngige added.

    On job creation, the Minister noted that there has been an increase in employment since the inception of the present administration, “as many Government agencies are employing and government is also creating agro-based jobs in the agricultural sector of the economy”.

    Chairman, Senate Committee on Employment and Labour, Senator Abu Ibrahim, appealed to the Ministry to promote the generation of more employment opportunities for the citizens, especially the youths.

    Also the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Labour and Employment, Honourable Ezenwa Francis Onyewuchi, acknowledged the challenges at the Geneva Labour Desk borne out of inadequate budget allocation.

    Ezenwa appreciated the incisiveness of the Minister’s presentation, adding that the Committee would do a proper scrutiny of it.

    The Minister was accompanied to the budget defence by the Minister of State, Labour and Employment, Prof. Stephen Ocheni, Permanent Secretary, Mr. William Alo, Directors and other staff of the Ministry.

  • Ngige, APC petition INEC over alleged stolen materials for election

    The Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, and the All Progressives Congress (APC), have petitioned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over alleged stolen electoral materials meant for two constituencies.

    The petition was addressed to the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Anambra State, Dr. Nkwachukwu Orji.

    Addressing reporters yesterday, Ngige said the two constituencies were Ihiala I and Awka South I, stressing that electoral materials kept in the custody of the local government chairmen were stolen.

    According to him,  “So far, there are reported cases of pilfering of INEC materials at Ihiala I and Awka South I, where our party agents have reported that materials kept in custody of the local government chairmen were no longer complete on the morning of the election at the RAC.”

    “We have petitioned the INEC through the REC, bringing his attention to that situation otherwise the elections in those two places would have been compromised ab initio,” he said.

    On the election, the Minister said, “Anambra is not doing governorship, we are doing legislative House and it has somehow affected the turnout of voters.”

    “But be that as it may, it’s a very important election as it affords the Anambra people the opportunity to form one arm of the government, State Assembly, which is for making state laws and which is the ambit of governance that is nearer to the people.”

    However, he said card reader was not much of a problem this time; adding that INEC should look into it very seriously as majority were still rejecting peoples thumbs.

  • Obiano, Ngige fail to deliver Buhari in Anambra

    …as Obi shows class

     

    Anambra state Governor, Willie Obiano and the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, have failed in their bids to give president Muhammadu Buhari’s victory during last Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections in Anambra State.

    Instead, it was the former Governor of the state and vice presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party PDP, Mr Peter Obi that triumphed.

    Obi and his presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubarka, won the 17 local government areas in the state already declared by the independent national electoral commission INEC.

    Before now, Ngige had raised the alarm that the process was flowed including the malfunctioned card readers that failed to capture his finger prints during the election, though, he later voted.

    In his local government of Idemili south, the President only got 2,220 votes for APC, while PDP polled 17,039.

    Also, the state Governor, who was said to be working for APC in the presidential race, mustered only 6,755 votes in Anambra east local government area, with PDP coming tops with 13,422 votes.

    Incidentally, Obiano and Hon Tony Nwoye, who was made national youth mobilizer, Muhammadu Buhari campaign council hailed from the same area.

    In the same vein, Senator Andy Uba, the Anambra state campaign coordinator for Buhari campaign organisation, lost the presidential election in Aguata, his council area too.

    The presidential candidate of APC scored 1,955 to trail the PDP candidate, who polled 32,328 votes.

  • Obiano, Ngige, Obi, Ezeemo express concern

    ANAMBRA State Governor, Willie Obiano, said yesterday he was taken aback by the Independent National Electoral Commission’s postponement of the Presidential and National Assembly elections.

    Speaking with The Nation through the Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Awka, Mr. C-Don Adinuba, Obiano said his party was already prepared to deliver all its candidates in the state before the unfortunate postponement.

    Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen Chris Ngige, said INEC’s action came with mixed feelings of disappointment because his party was ready for action.

    He however added that having listened to the INEC Chairman and his reasons, “anything worth doing is worth doing well, they should take their time.”

    However, Ngige said the electoral body should do the needful by concealing all the materials that had left the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) premises to different destinations.

    He said his party was already poised to deliver the President and other APC candidates at the polls in Anambra State.

    Also, the former Governor of the state and Vice Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Peter Obi, described it as unexplainable.

    His media aide, Mr. Valentine Obienyem, said Obi was calm as ever, but regretted that people had lost heavily in every aspect as a result of the postponement.

    However, many others were already counting their losses over the action by the electoral commission, having travelled from far and near for the February 16 election.

    Mr. Chidi Okafor, told The Nation that some of them had lost resources in the market, adding that they left their states of abode to come back home to vote only to be confronted by INEC.

    Mr. Godwin Ezeemo, PDP stalwart in Anambra, described the postponement as a huge embarrassment to Nigeria.

    Prof Stella Okunna, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, said the situation was a very sad one, leaving a bad precedence for a nation’s political life, adding, “This election was not impromptu, INEC brought shame to this country.”

  • Ndigbo endorsed Atiku in error, says Ngige

    Labour and Productivity Minister Senator Chris Ngige spoke with TONY AKOWE in Abuja on the endorsement of the Peoples democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Alhaji Atiku Abubakar by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, and its implications for the Southeast.

    Do you think the President will win the region with the presence of Obi?

    Well, I don’t know. What I can tell you is that in Anambra State, we will struggle for the polls with Obi. We are not going to be pushed down like they did the last time.

    What do you make of the endorsement of PDP Presidential candidate by the leadership of Ohanaeze?

    The leadership of Ohaneze shut themselves in the foot. In a bid to please their masters, they went overboard. First and foremost, they went and did an endorsement in November 2018 and when the strategy committee of Ohanaeze confronted them in the executive, they denied. They said they were invited there just like every other person. But, the clips showed that they were at that meeting in Nike Lake and 99.9 per cent of the people in attendance were from the PDP. Professor ABC Nwosu, Dubem Onya, Prof Ogbu, Emmanuel Inwuanyawu were present. Only few came there without knowing that it was for an adoption. I am telling you that they found it difficult to conceal what they were doing. I personally spoke to the President of Ohanaeze, who is my personal friend of many years, and I said to him, we have a guest and so, he should do us the favour of moving this meeting to another day, so that we can all attend. In fact, the governors of the South East were to be involved because the governor of Anambra and Enugu will welcome Mr. President to their domain. President was to commission CBN centre of excellence build in University of Nigeria, Enugu campus. These were functions slated for that day and he said no, that he couldn’t do so because this meeting has been long fixed and I said no, the president of the nation takes precedence in appointments whenever he visits a place. Finally he said we can move the hours from 11 am and I said fine. Our president goes away from Enugu Airport by 6pm. He said no, that he can only move it to 4pm. I spoke to Ebonyi State governor, who is the chairman of South East Governors Forum, I urged him to look at the problem we have with the President of Ohanaeze,  maybe he can intervene because he is suppose to be part of this meeting. I had already contacted the governor of Anambra State, so he said he will take it up with him which he did. I personally invited the President of Ohanaeze and said, you should be at Zik’s place because this is your function. The governor of Anambra told me that he invited him. When Ebonyi governor called me that I should tell my colleagues that the meeting will be for 7pm because he had spoken with him. So by 6 pm we saw off the president at Enugu airport. Myself, Ken Nnamani, Governor of Enugu, Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Science and Technology, former Governor Chime and many others started rushing to Nike Lake and got there around 6:30 pm for a meeting fixed for 7pm and we were told that the meeting was concluded by 20 minutes past 5pm. They have endorsed the candidate of the PDP. Two things are clear; Ohanaeze is a socio cultural organisation and not meant for endorsement of any candidate. What you are supposed to be doing, is to get the candidates, hear from them and give them your chatter of demands and not going to endorse because it is there in our constitution, that we are not allying with any political party. Some people have tried it before unfortunately they got their fingers burnt. With all due respect Professor Nwabuieze in 1999 without clearance from Ohanaeze general assembly endorsed Chief Olu Falae against Obasanjo. Olu Falae was flying the flag of APP/AD alliance. Chief Obasanjo won the election and held it against the Igbos and claimed that it was late Chief Alex Ekwueme that secretly told Nwabuieze to go and endorse. Little did they know that it caused a lot of bitterness between Alex Ekwueme and his friend Nwabuieze. Nwabuieze is a strong willed man so he did that by his own judgement thinking he was doing the igbos good. Obasanjo antagonised Alex Ekwueme and all of us who are members of Ohanaeze and all of us who he felt were close to Chief Alex Ekwueme and that was how he took some ragamofian from South East and made them his blossom friends. Again at another time, they went and endorsed in 2003 and the same thing happened. In 2015 the immediate predecessor of Nwodo Prince Igaliwe and the secretary general again went and endorsed president Jonathan and said his name is Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan that he is their brother. They failed because president buhari beat Jonathan in 2015 election. They claim marginalisation because of that endorsement and even the award and allocation of votes that followed there after. Some APC members used it against all of us in the APC. They said there was no vote from us and that the election was won without any input from the South East.

    Read also: Hoodlums set parties’ vehicles ablaze

    Obviously that affected the south east in the composition of government?

    That gave rise to the famous 5 percent; those who gave me five percent and those who gave me 95 percent been padelled against Mr. President. In any case, we are all human beings. If someone looks you in the face and say I will not vote for you and you eventually win the election and he didn’t vote for you and you saw he didn’t vote for you even though it is a secret ballot, but you also saw that there was allocation, tell me would you be very happy? However, I am not trying to justify anything. All I am saying is that we can be adopting candidates.

    The visit of a group from Ohaneze to the President, was that not an adoption?

    If you go and see what happened, it wasn’t an adoption, but a case of coming to say thank you for in infrastructural development that has taken place in the South East. The second Niger Bridge we can see it, he has put out N33 billion for it and no other government has done it. He put it in the national budget and put it as a flagship project in Nigeria and you are funding it. Unlike the previous governments that say it should done on an IPP bases for foreigners to invest and collect money, this president said I am building direct, I am funding direct. I queried with Okonji Iweala and Pius Anyim and the6 are still alive, when they came into the senate caucus of the South East in 2011 when we became senators. They came and told us that it is an IPP that they are doing on second Niger Bridge and investors were coming and I told them that they should clear away from here with the kind of proposal. Oweto bridge is being built for David Mark to connect Loco and Oweto for N80 billion and was funded from federal budget. At the time they came, the Niger Bridge was estimated to cost N110 billion and Madam Okonji Iweala and my friend Pius were saying that it would be built on contractor IPP and I said no and that was what happened. Today this man is building second Niger Bridge, he completed the Musullium. He is building Enugu to Okigwe to Umuahia to Aba to Port Harcourt which was abandoned in the last 16 years. He is building Enugu, Oji River, Amansil, Awka to Onitsha road which was also abandoned during PDP regime. I have no apologies to say that this man is doing well and that is what our people came to do. The people who came are members of the Ime Obi who don’t believe in what Nwodo and his group have done. A lot of us, don’t believe, the South East governors don’t believe in what they have done. Governor Obiano has voiced his own out. The Secretary to Government and delegations were with us standing there at Nike Lake and that was a total disrespect to us. I have worked in Ohanaeze, I was secretary of Ohanaeze Strategy Committee. I was deputy chairman of Ukpoko Igbo as President of Aka Ikenga. I brought Aka Ikenga from Lagos and we organised a forum for South East delegates under Abacha regime to go to the constituent assembly. We did it with our own resources. So no one will talk to me about Ohanaeze or Igbo politics to me. I have paid my dues. I was President of Aka Ikenga for 6 years. So nobody; I repeat, all these people that are parading and masquerading can’t talk to me about Ohanaeze or Igbo politics and non of them can tell me that he loves the Igbos than me. The Igbos of Anambra know that I love them more than any of these people that are parading all over the place. I put my life on the line for the people of Anambra state so that they will have freedom and I also ready to put it on the line again for the Igbo nation so that they can secure their future in Nigeria.

     

  • ASSBIFI advises Ngige to inaugurate NSITF board

    Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIF) President, Comrade Oyinkansola Olasanoye, has urged the Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, to inaugurate the board of Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) without delay.

    Speaking with The Nation,  Olasanoye augued that the law that set up the fund made it clear that it should be managed by a board.

    Olasanoye asked the minister to inaugurate the board to enable it  curb corruption and protect workers’ benefits.

    She lamented that though the minister had been appointing committees to either investigate, or review, urging stakeholders to join hands, the minister had not inaugurated the board.

    Olasanoye said the union was seeking a peaceful path to press home its demand to avoid the negative effect of industrial action on the sector and the  economy.

    While stressing that ASSBIFI had opted for negotiations, she said the group believes in collective bargaining and will not allow anything that would tarnish its image or work against workers’ welfare.

    ‘’We appeal to the minister to inaugurate the board of NSITF. The Act that set up NSITF states that there should be a board and the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour should  represent the minister.

    “So, if there is a board and the permanent secretary represents the minister on the board.The minister should not say there are corrupt practices in the organisation when he has a representative there. We do not think that it is now that he is refusing to inaugurate the board that there will be no corrupt practices there. We feel the more people are there, the better, ” she said.

    She appealed to the National Assembly to amend the Labour Act to arrest casualisation, which, she noted, could encourage corruption.

    She said the union had negotiated with banks that laid off their staff to ensure that the workers got their severance packages.

    Olasanoye noted that despite the wealth created by global economy and technology in the working place, workers were left behind.

    According to her, with the global economic crisis hitting workers, work can only be decent when it has fair income that enhances workers’ standard of living, with social protection for the family, without greed dictating the rule of the economy.

     

  • Labour, Yari, Ngige differ on N27,000 minimum wage for states

    FRESH controversies broke out yesterday over the new Minimum Wage Bill, which has scaled Second Reading in both chambers of the National Assembly.

    Finance Minister Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, Labour & Employment Minister Chris Ngige and Labour disagreed on the bill.

    The bickering was at the public hearing of the House of Representatives ad-Hoc Committee on new Minimum Wage, headed by the Deputy Speaker Yussuff Lasun.

    The Federal government will pay N30, 000 as the minimum wage to its workers, Dr. Ngige said at the hearing.

    According to him, the N27,000 minimum wage contained in the National Minimum Wage Act Amendment Bill as sent to the National Assembly, is for the states and the Organised Private Sector (OPS).

    The minister said the initial wage figure approved by the Federal Government was N27, 000, which was later reviewed upwards to N30, 000, when they met with the National Council of State (NCS).

    Ngige told the committee that the issue of a national minimum wage is a national matter, which the government is committed to.

    He said the government set up a tripartite committee, which comprised members of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), Nigeria Chamber of Commerce, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) and other groups that came up with the new wage.

    The minister added that the new wage figure is in tandem with international conventions on labour matters and there was a general consensus on the figure.

    Labour disagreed at this point, even though Ngige said the Federal Government has agreed to pay its own workers the N30,000 minimum wage.

    It insisted that the wage should be all-encompassing for federal and state workers.

    NLC President Ayuba Wabba did not disagree, but proposed four amendment to the bill.

    Read also: 27,000 minimum wage bill scales second reading

    “We have four amendments that we are proposing here. Amendment one is about the figure. In the current bill, Item 1(a) provides for a minimum wage of N27, 000; we want to say and plead that the figure should be made to be N30, 000,” he said.

    Even the Employers & Small and Medium Entrepreneur Associations also insisted on the recommendations of the tripartite committee for N30, 000.

    But, Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) Chairman and Zamfara State Governor Abdulaziz Yari was embarrassed by the workers, who disrupted his address.

    The NGF chair told the gathering that because the revenue allocation formula had not been favourable to the state governors, they resisted the new wage bill initially.

    He insisted that for equity and fairness in revenue sharing among the three tiers of government to be enthroned, there is the need to review the revenue allocation formula.

    He incurred the wrath of the workers when he said the position of the National Council of State on the new wage bill, which recommended N27, 000, is acceptable to the governors.

    The Finance Minister told the lawmakers that the government has not factored the new wage bill into the 2019 Budget.

    It was a hall packed full of workers, with a palpable air of expectations and anticipation. Her statement seemed to dampen the enthusiasm of the labour members in the hall.

    She, however, said the government had paid salaries, allowances and pensions of federal civil servants up to a hundred per cent.

    According to her, the government had paid N2.6 trillion and N3.0 trillion generated same period.

    She cautioned of a revenue shortfall and added that the government is working to address it.

    Budget Office Director-General Ben Akabueze, who represented the Minister of Budget & National Planning, Udo Udoma, said though the Federal Government was able to pay, but some states are spending more than 70 per cent of revenues available to them on salary, that’s why the president took the step to constitute the tripartite committee to come up with a framework to ensure that the new wage is sustainable.

    The House Speaker Yakubu Dogara said the N30, 000 minimum wage being canvassed is not enough.

    According to him, it can barely feed a small family unit, adding that it is only when workers are dignified with wages that can provide them minimum comfort that their productivity level would increase.

    The ad-hoc committee said it has resolved to ensure that the new Minimum Wage Act 2019 is passed into law before the commencement of the 2019 general elections.

    Lasun explained why the House accelerated the process of passing the bill, adding that the review is long overdue.

    He said the N27, 000 has already been rejected by labour and the National Assembly is expected to do the needful.