Minimum Wage: Strike looming as Labour leaders storm 20 ‘disobedient states’

By Tunde Bright Olorungbotemi

The leaders of the organised labour has warned the 20 disobedient states unwilling to comply with the directive of the federal government on payment of the new minimum wage.

As the industrial unrest looming across the country over non-implementation of the N30,000 new national minimum wage,  Organised labour is sending its officials to disobedient states ahead of planned show down.

Investigation revealed that about 20 of such states have identified nationwide, VAM has learnt.

According to findings, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, is sending its senior officials to the states to prepare ground for the next action as Organised Labour plans to deal with the states individually rather than collective.

General Secretary of NLC, Emma Ugboaja, told newsmen that Congress had received situations reports from states on their level of compliance and that NLC had already analyzed the reports.

According to him “We have received the situation reports from our state councils on the level of compliance by each state. We have analyzed the reports. I can tell you that we are going to treat the issue on state-by- state basis. That is to say, we are not going to declare a nationwide strike over the matter as it is.

What we have decided to do based on the situation reports, is to send our team from here (National Secretariat) to the states to among others, find out why negotiations have taken so long, whether the negotiation is genuine or the state government is just playing games. We do not want a situation where the government is deliberately using delay tactics in the name of a so-called negotiation to buy time. 

But, if the negotiation is genuine, we want to know why the negotiation has taken so long to be completed. In a situation like that, our officials will help to speed up the process to make sure it does not drag beyond this January. If our officials find out that the negotiation is not genuine, we will compel real negotiation. If this is not possible, we will then authorize and declare industrial unrest or strike.

“The governors have no excuse, they have to pay. It is a law. Most of the state governors have not changed. They are still living their ostentatious life style, flying private jets and chattering jets to birthday parties and other ceremonies. They still have and still engaging armies of aides and all manner of assistants. 

In fact, the activities of the immediate past Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, NGF; who is also the immediate past governor of Zamfara State, Alhaji Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari, have exposed the antics of the governors. All the while, the man was pretending and impoverishing the workers and other citizens of the state while he was living in affluence.

“During his time, besides underpaying the workers and owing them several arrears of salaries including unpaid pensions, he was busy awarding all manner of benefits to himself. To worsen the situation, he influenced the state lawmakers to enact an outrageous pension law in his favour and paid himself three months pensions in advance in millions of Naira, but refused to pay the state pensioners  several arrears of unpaid entitlements.

By next week (this week), probably Tuesday or Wednesday, we will send our senior officials to the states that have not concluded negotiations to asses the situation in such states for our next line of action, like I have said earlier.”