Seventeen state governors have raised committees to implement the N70,000 new minimum wage for workers across the country.
The 17 states which set up the implementation committees are Ogun, Ekiti, Sokoto, Kebbi, Osun, Enugu, Borno, Zamfara, Kogi, Kwara, Gombe, Kano, Taraba, Delta, Rivers, Jigawa and Abia.
The development is happening as the Federal Government commenced payment of the new minimum wage to its 1.2 million workers last Thursday.
The Accountant General of the Federation, Oluwatoyin Madein, in a memo to the Budget Office of the Federation, noted that the civil servants would be paid the minimum wage with effect from September.
On the heels of this, Edo, Lagos, Adamawa states have also commenced payment of the new salary as Anambra pledged to implement the minimum wage in October.
The Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress in Adamawa state, Emmanuel Fashe, confirmed that Governor Ahmadu Fintiri started paying the new minimum wage in August ahead of the Federal Government and other states.
Fashe said that in less than three weeks after President Bola Tinubu signed the new minimum wage bill into law in July, the Adamawa state government commenced payment in August.
In Anambra, Governor Chukwuma Soludo disclosed that the state will commence the payment of the N70,000 minimum wage from October 2024.
Soludo announced this at the Prof. Dora Akunyili Women’s Development Centre in Awka, on Thursday, while meeting with all principals and head teachers in public primary and secondary schools across the state.
But speaking with our correspondent, a senior NLC official said the value of the new minimum wage had been eroded, noting that the implementation of the new salary structure should not be romanticised.
“The truth is this, we should not be romanticizing people who are lawbreakers. People who are lawbreakers should not be romanticised. If the Federal Government says they want to start paying, I don’t think it is something that should be celebrated. What is it that they want to start paying? N70,000 that has already been eroded by the actions and policies of the government?
“If you look at the price of PMS (petrol) from the time the minimum wage was signed into law and now, you could see the deliberate actions of the government to erode the minimum wage.
“A bag of rice now is almost N88,000 or thereabouts. And then it means we are saying we have a minimum wage that cannot buy a bag of rice is a shameful minimum wage. So it’s a starvation wage,” he stated.
