Dear Safiya Dantiye,
I enjoyed your subject article. You brought sound argument to the debate on “minimum wage”. However, the issue will simply not go away by continually adopting the traditional and ineffective way of bringing government or employers to the negotiating table – strike action is simply ineffective at least in the meantime.
Two things have weakened the negotiating power of both TUC and NLC especially under the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. First, if you recall the first petrol price increase in the early years of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, the masses vehemently refused to join the strike action or protest as called upon by NLC. The North and South-West, for sake of political correctness, decided to make a mess of that action. As a matter of fact, the whole idea of increasing the minimum wage to N30,000, in my opinion, was done to foam the runway for APC to get another election victory in 2018. I’m not surprised that the implementation remains sticky.
Second, the Covid-19 pandemic and its concomitant effect on the way governance is done is another pointer to the weakening of the negotiating power of trade unions. Government operations were comatose, except for payment of salaries and other skeletal government services. Believe me when I say, this has got the governments thinking on what should be the right size of government – staff-wise. Governments at federal, state and local levels believe they can run efficiently on a lean staff strength.
The way out is for employees to understand that people they elect or canvass for to get public office hold the aces to make their life better or otherwise. Today, legislators are canvassing for the removal of “minimum wage” from the “concurrent list”. This agitation has just begun. It may not go away any time soon.
To the so-called liberals or proponents of restructuring, minimum wage can’t be the first thing they should attend to. Besides, they speak from the both sides of their mouths. While they canvass for states to able to determine what they can pay as minimum wage, they’re also calling for state police. I can’t imagine a state police force without being paid for just a month. And the fact that state governments have held local governments in thrall only speaks of the hypocrisy of the “restructuring” ideation.
Many thanks for bringing this topic up.
Yours faithfully,
Nuhu Othman
