President Muhammadu Buhari has advised Nigerian workers not to allow themselves to be used by politicians as political weapons.

He said, as he received the report of the National Minimum Wage Committee today, Tuesday, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja: “may I therefore, implore workers and their leaders not to allow themselves to be used as political weapons.”

The President promised to quickly raise an Executive Bill to the National Assembly on the new minimum wage of N30,000 for passage within the shortest possible time, adding: “I am fully committed to having a new National Minimum Wage Act in the very near future.”

Buhari said that as the Executive arm of government commences its review of the report, it would continue to engage the labour unions and other relevant stakeholders in closing any open areas presented in the report.

“I therefore would like to ask for your patience and understanding in the coming weeks.”

He acknowledged the leadership of the organized labour and private sector as well as representatives of State and Federal Governments for all their hard work, saying that the fact that “we are here today, is a notable achievement.”

The President reviewed the work of the committee which was inaugurated on November 27 2017, adding that the setting up of the committee became necessary for many reasons.

“The last review took place in 2011. We all know since then, the prices of key consumables have increased and the most vulnerable of our workers are struggling to make ends meet.

“Since 2011, many changes have taken place. Nigeria rebased its GDP to become the largest economy in Africa. We reported very strong GDP growth rates and exceptional performance of our capital markets.  However, these reported successes did not flow into the pockets and homes of majority of Nigerians.

“In the last three years, we focused on correcting this deficiency. We are working to create a diversified and inclusive economy.

“We are pushing to clear pension arrears owed to our retired workers with the limited resources available to us.

“We supported State Governments to pay workers salary. And of course, we set up a committee in order to review the minimum wage of workers.

“In constituting this committee, we took into account the need for all stakeholders to be adequately represented – the government, the private sector and most importantly the workers. Our goal was to get an outcome that was consensual.

“From the onset, we knew the committee had a difficult task ahead of it. But at the same time, we were also confident that the patriotic and professional background of its members would produce realistic, fair and implementable recommendations that will be considered by both the executive and legislative arms of government.

“I am not surprised that the committee has worked for close to one year. I am also not surprised that on a few occasions, the debates got heated and sometimes, these differences came out.

“What is truly inspiring is that, in almost all instances of disagreements, the committee members always came back to the negotiating table with a common goal of improving the welfare of Nigerian workers. On behalf of all Nigerians today, I want to thank you for your commitment and sacrifice in getting us to where we are today.

“In the past few days, I have been receiving regular updates on your deliberations. And today, I am pleased that you have completed your work in a peaceful and non-confrontational manner. The entire nation is grateful to you all.

“The Committee Chairman highlighted some of the challenges encountered during your deliberations, especially as it relates to having a consensus position acceptable by all parties.

“I understand, on the government side, the concerns raised were around affordability – that today many states struggle to meet their existing salary requirements.

“On the side of labour, the points raised focused on the need for any increase to be meaningful.

“In a way, both arguments are valid. I want to assure you all that we will immediately put in place the necessary machinery that will close out these open areas.

Organized Labour unions have called off the nationwide workers strike that was to commence today, Tuesday, in protest against alleged government failure to accept N30,000 as the new national minimum wage.

The decision to call off the strike is coming after hours of meeting yesterday, Monday between Organized Labour, represented by the Nigeria Labour Congress, United Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress, and a Federal Government team headed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha.

The Federal Government team, which also included the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, agreed to forward the two positions of the Government and Labour to President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, reports said.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)i, the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage, made up of the Government, Labour and Organised Private Sector, agreed on Monday to submit the report of the Committee to President Buhari on Tuesday at 4:15pm.

While the Federal Government is proposing N24,000 as minimum wage, the States have offered to pay N22,500, but Labour is demanding N30,000.

The President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba, confirmed the suspension of the strike at the end of the last meeting of the tripartite committee on Monday night.

An earlier analysis of the struggle for new minimum wage by  Bassey Udo is reproduced here for proper understanding:

The agitation by Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and affiliates for a new national minimum wage for Nigerian workers has merit.

Evidently, the current economic fundamentals do not favour continuing to keep the current N18,000 minimum wage approved since 2010. Since 2015, the pay became due for another review in line with the provisions of the National Minimum Wage Act (amendment) 2011.

Whatever indices or parameters used to arrive at N18,000 in 2010 must have become grossly obsolete.

Abuja –based economist and chief executive of Global Analytics Consulting Limited, Tope Fasua, said labour has a right to demand for higher wages at the time, given spiraling inflationary rate in the country, which has compounded since the last review in 2011.

Mr Fasua, who is also the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP) presidential candidate, said the value of N18,000 in 2011 has diminished to less than N8,000 today.

Economic Fundamentals

In 2011, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) data showed inflation at about 10.8 per cent, with exchange rate of the Naira to the dollar averaged between N151.96 and N155.26.

The country’s gross domestic products (GDP) stood at about $411.7 billion and GDP growth rate at about 8.2 per cent.

In 2018, the NBS put inflation rate in the second quarter of the year at 11.23 per cent, with exchange rate of Naira to the dollar at N306.25, or N362 in the parallel market. GDP is estimated at $375.77 billion since 2017, growing at the rate of 2.9 per cent.

To compute a minimum wage, consideration must be given to the prevailing cost of living index, inflationary trend and capacity of employers to pay a living wage.

Living wage is based on the belief a worker should earn enough income from his or her work to afford the basic living costs of his or her family.

According to WageIndicator.org, living wage is an approximate income a worker needs to meet his or her family’s basic needs for food, housing, transport, health, education, tax deductions and other necessities.

In other words, living wage should take care of the worker’s food costs, housing costs, transport costs, tax/contribution costs and other costs, including medical and children education.

Therefore, in approving minimum wage, consideration must be given to all the essential needs of workers and their families.

But, Mr Fasua said Nigerian government at all levels do not always bear in mind these factors when paying their workers.

For Ayo Teriba, an economist and chief executive officer, Economic Associates, the real issue in the minimum wage debate is no more whether the demand is necessary, but whether N18,000 take home pay will “take the workers home and allow them live reasonably”.

“Divide N18,000 by 30 days, that comes to N600 a day. What can anybody do with N600 per day?” Mr Teriba asked in an interview with Leadership Newspapers.

At N56,000 (the initial figure labour proposed), he said this would translate to a paltry N1,866, an amount he says is not even up to what some less endowed countries pay their citizens as unemployment allowance.

Is N65,000 Demand Realistic?

Since the debate shifted focus on recent demand by organised labour for N65,000 as new minimum wage, the question most concerned Nigerians are asking is: justified as the demand might seem, how realistic, affordable and achievable is it in the face of the country’s current economic reality?

The question is even more compelling when labour says at least 33 of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory are owing various months arrears of salaries to their workers at N18,000 a month.

Not even the so-called oil producing states that receive additional derivation revenues from the monthly federation account allocations have been able to meet this obligation.

If one is looking at the narrow view of today’s finances and state of the country’s economy, said the lead director, Centre for Social Justice (CENSOJ), Eze Onyekpere, N65,000 minimum wage is not realistic.

The economy has been struggling to stabilise, hardly able to assimilate further recurrent pressures, following its fragile recovery from one of its worst recessions in the country’s history in 2017.

At the end of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting last week Tuesday, the CBN warned the country risked slipping back into recession if fiscal and monetary authorities are not getting their acts together to curb rising inflation and declining growth in key sectors of the economy.

One of the things these authorities have to avoid is piling further recurrent pressures on the largely deficit budget through huge overheads and unrealistic salary bills.

According to Mr Onyekpere, looking at the 2017 Budget implementation report released recently by the federal ministry of budget & national planning, the country is already bankrupt and does not need to attempt “to bite more than it cannot chew”.

He said the report shows total revenue Nigeria realised from all sources, including tax and crude oil exports, was N2.657 trillion, while recurrent expenditure, consisting overheads, workers’ salaries, service wide votes, was N2.7 trillion.

“This means the country even borrowed about N100 billion to finance recurrent budget, while the country paid N1.634 trillion as debt, meaning for every 100 kobo we (Nigeria) borrowed, 68 kobo was used to repay the debt, leaving 32 kobo. If we borrow to augment recurrent expenditure and service wide votes, it means the country is bankrupt,” Mr Onyekpere noted.

Latest data by the NBS showed that since recovering from recession in 2016, the country’s GDP, which declined from 2.05 per cent in the last quarter of 2017 to 1.95 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, slipped further by -0.45 basis points to the current 1.5 per cent.

Crude oil, which accounts for more than 80 per cent of the country’s export revenues, is at the moment selling at a high price of about $80 a barrel at the international oil market.

But, the country’s daily oil production capacity has consistently dwindled below the 2.3 million barrels projection in successive federal budgets since 2016.

From about 2.05 million barrels per day in the first quarter of 2016, the output has dropped to about 1.84 million barrels recorded in the second quarter of 2018.

Also, the country’s foreign reserves has been trending southwards, from about $45 billion at the end-July to $44 billion on September 20, while the Debt Management Office (DMO) reports a rising public debt profile currently at about N22.4trillion as at June 30.

High Minimum Wage Could Fuel Inflation

Interestingly, labour’s argument for a new minimum wage is based on the rising inflationary trend.

Regardless, the flipside of the argument has been that the demand for a new minimum wage at this time could fuel inflation in the economy.

Mr Fasua agrees.

“With the perennial mismanagement of the economy on several fronts, if government increases minimum wage to N65,000, or by over 200 per cent today, under one year, the economy will definitely spiral into a hyper-inflation that will take everything and return the workers to where they started,” Mr Fasua said.

He said the greater danger will be that the private sector, especially small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs), would not be able to also increase their wages at the same scale. The outcome would be “shedding of weight or actual closure”.

Rather than ask for N65,000 new minimum wage, Mr Fasua said, labour should settle for about N30,000 pay, while also insisting on government to embark on mass employment for the youth.

Also, he said labour should demand for increased investment in critical sectors of the economy and social amenities that usually take a sizeable chunk of their monthly salaries.

“Government should focus on the development of social infrastructures that take a large percentage of the workers’ salaries.

“These include food production, by working with the universities and polytechnics to utilise their scientific research findings; incentivising the textile sector to produce clothes, providing low income housing and affordable mass transportation.

“When all thes are provided, Nigerians will need a behavioural change to focus more on the bare necessities and avoid frivolities,” Mr Fasua said.

Bigger Picture

For Mr Onyekpere, if we are looking at the big picture, the questions to ask are: Is Nigeria tapping all the resources available to it? Are we collecting all the taxes we are supposed to collect? Have we reformed enough to cut the cost of governance and plug all the loop holes for corruption and loses in the economy?

“If we answer these question in the positive, then we have no reason not to pay workers decent salaries. There is no reason why our ministers and members of the National Assembly are living in opulence, while the rest of Nigerians are living in poverty,” he said.

For chief executive officer, Pan Africa Develoment Corporation, Odilim Enwegbara, labour should insist Nigerian workers are paid N100,000 minimum wage.

“They should even insist they will only vote for presidential and governorship candidates who will be ready to pay a N100,000 minimum wage,” Mr Enwegbara said.

He said Nigeria has one of the lowest minimum wages in the world. He wonders how workers would be productive and shun corruption if they are not paid well.

Blaming government misplaced priorities, Mr Enwegbara urged government to downsize unproductive workforce, remove ghost workers and keep a slim and efficient workforce it can pay good salaries enough for them to lead a good living.

“If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys to work for you,” he said.

New Perspectives, More Questions

As the tripartite committee returns to conclude its assignment and give the country a new minimum wage, several other perspectives and issues have emerged from the debate.

Within the context of true federalism, should minimum wage be a national issue? Or should the federating units (the states) be allowed to pay what they can afford to the limit of their economic capacity and resources? Will the current agitation by labour end up with national minimum wage for workers in public or private sectors?

Or would the new minimum wage bridge the dichotomy between the pay to workers in the civil service and their colleagues in the commissions and parastatals under the same government?  Should there be a legislation prescribing stiff sanctions against employers of labour that fail to pay their workers in accordance with the approved national minimum wage law?

In 2008, prior to the commencement of negotiations that led to the current N18,000 minimum wage, labour had proposed N52,000 as new minimum

It was learnt that at least 20 state governments submitted memoranda proposing various amounts ranging from N46,700 to as low as N10,000 a month as minimum wage.

At the end of negotiations, although the average from the various submissions tallied at about N24,000, labour settled for N18,000, taking into considerations the prevailing economic conditions in the country then, subsisting revenue allocation formula and capacity of private and public employers to pay.

Prior to the commencement of the now suspended warning strike by the NLC, the minister of labour & employment, Chris Ngige, said the work of the tripartite committee on minimum wage was stalled following some state governors’ reluctance to submit their proposal on a new wage system.

The minister said without inputs from the governors on the issue, there cannot be any agreement on a new minimum wage.

At the inauguration of the 30-member tripartite committee on minimum wage last November, President Muhammadu Buhari urged them to work towards a new minimum wage all tiers of government would be able to pay.

The president also touched on the issue of minimum wage being under the exclusive legislative list in the 1999, and not the concurrent legislative list. This puts the issue under the purview of the federal government.

A former minister of national planning, Abubakar Sulaiman, told Punch newspapers that apart from inadequate capacity of states to determine their workers’ minimum wage, they lack the requisite independence to legislate on labour related matters.

“As long as we are not practising fiscal federalism, let the centre continue to decide the minimum wage for Nigerian workers across all tiers,” the former minister said.

To give states capacity to shoulder the minimum wage obligations regularly, the governors have been asking for a review of the existing revenue sharing formula.

The formula gives federal government 52.68 per cent of total revenue from the federation account, the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) 26.72 per cent and the 774 local governments 20.6 per cent.

For Joe Aligbe, former national vice president, Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, as long as minimum wage is on the exclusive list, states cannot legislate on it.

He says whatever the federal government approves, the states can choose to raise it to whatever level they desire, citing the Edo State example which raised its minimum wage above N18,000 to N25,000.

Beyond the monthly allocation from the federation account, the states need to transform their internally generated revenue to enhance their capacity to pay their workers living wages in line with the size of their respective economies.