….President, governors discuss N30,000 minimum wage
President Muhammadu Buhari has urged state governors to redouble efforts in addressing infrastructure deficiencies even as he reiterated that the country’s economy is in very bad shape.
Buhari wants the 36 governors in Nigeria to come together and think and rethink on way forward as 2019 may be worse than this year.
Buhari spoke in Aso Rock during a meeting with the governors on way out of the minimum wage saga which the governors say they can’t pay.
Chairman of Nigerian Governors Forum, Governor Abdullaziz Yari of Zamfara State said it was a closed-door meeting.
The organised labour and the federal government have proposed N30,000 minimum wage for workers but state governments are saying the amount would be difficult to pay most states.
The News Agency of Nigeria observed that some of the governors were represented by their deputy governors at the meeting which lasted for about 30 minutes.
Buhari had on November 19 held similar meeting with representatives of Nigerian Governors Forum at the Presidential Villa Abuja, where the same issue of national minimum wage was discussed.
Representatives of the Governors’ forum who met with the president over the issue then included governors of Zamfara, Lagos, Kaduna and Enugu, while the minister of labour and employment Chris Ngige was also in attendance.
The Amal Pepple Tripartite Committee on the Review of National Minimum Wage had on November 6 submitted its report to Mr Buhari where it recommended N30,000 as the new national minimum wage.
While receiving the report, the president expressed his commitment to ensuring the implementation of a new national minimum wage and pledged to transmit an Executive Bill (on National Minimum wage) to the National Assembly for its passage within the shortest possible time.
However, the 36 state governors had since expressed reservation over the proposed new minimum wage by the Amal Pepple committee, saying the state governments were not in a stable financial position to pay the new minimum wage.
Chairman of the Governors’ forum and governor of Zamfara State Abdul’aziz Yari had on November 15 said at the end of an emergency meeting of governors in Abuja that payment of N30,000 wage was not practicable.