Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu and Labour leaders are currently having a closed door meeting at the Presidential Villa Abuja to fine tune decisions on a new minimum wage.
The meeting was convened at the instance of the President to consolidate negotiations and possibly resolve the lingering imbroglio surrounding the minimum wage issue.
The leadership of the Organized Labour were led by the President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Comrade Joe Ajaero and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Festus Osifo.
The team arrived at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, about 2pm and were led straight to meet with President Tinubu in his office over the thorny issue.
Though the agenda of the meeting is not made public, it may not be unconnected to the lingering minimum wage issues.
Recall that the Tripartite Committee on the new national minimum wage had recently submitted two figures to the President as the organized private sector and the government team had offered to pay N62,000, while the organized labour demanded N250,000.
Following the disagreement over the figure, the President has delayed to send any figure to the National Assembly through an Executive Bill to consult with all the relevant stakeholders with a view to resolving all the contentious issues.
Besides the Labour leaders, other stakeholders attending the meeting, on the government’s side are the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu; Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), George Akume; Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun; Ministers of Health, and coordinating Minister of Social Welfare, Prof Ali Pate; Minister of State for Labour, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha; Information and and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris; Education, Prof Mamman Tahir.
