The Federal and State Governments as well as employers of labour may have to start adjusting their 2025 budget estimates for the year after the organised labour commenced discussion for an annual increase to the ₦70,000 minimum wage being paid to workers across Nigeria.
According to the workers, it is important that the minimum wage paid to employees reflect a rise in inflation every year.
“What we are pushing on for Labour is that instead of you (the government) waiting for five years to increase the minimum wage, you will now look at the inflation of the last five years and try to make some adjustments, why can’t we reflect the inflation on an annual basis?” TUC boss Festus Osifo said on Channels Television’s Politics Today on January 1, 2025.
The president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) said members of the organisation as well as their colleagues in the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) have begun talks in this regard.
“For example, we have entered January 2025, by the 15th of January 2025, the National Bureau of Statistics is going to release the inflation figure for December,” he explained.
“So, what we are pushing for as Labour is that, if for example, the inflation figure is 35%, apply that 35% to the ₦70,000 minimum wage so that it will become reflective of what the true value is.
“When we get to 2026, you will also do similar application. That is actually what we are pushing. We shouldn’t be waiting for five years.
“In the new Act now is three years to do those adjustments but we could be doing them systemically by applying the inflation as of December of the preceding year to what the minimum wage is.
“This is part of the position that we are also going to canvass this year. We started the conversation last year but we will continue it in 2025.”
In July 2024, after months of protracted talks, the Federal Government and labour unions reached a consensus figure of ₦70,000 minimum wage which was later approved by President Bola Tinubu.
The increase came five years after the last review pegged at ₦30,000 but with the astronomic rise in cost of living, attributed to a more than quadruple hike in energy costs and petrol subsidy removal, labour unions have argued that ₦70,000 cannot take any worker home and thus demanded a decent living wage.
