By – Abba Hamisu Sani
Africa-Press – Nigeria. Mr. Benson Upah is the Head of Information and Public Affairs of the Nigerian Labour Congress, an umbrella of all Labour Unions in Nigeria.
In this Interview with Africa Press the Unionist discuss issues surrounding the ongoing effort by the Congress towards the Increment of the minimum wage from 30 thousand Naira to a reasonable amount, Workers’ welfare, and the position of the law about some state governor’s nonchalant attitude in paying the 30 thousand nairas as minimum wage since 2019.
What is the latest situation about the issues of minimum wage review?
The Current regime of Nigerian minimum wage which is 30,000 Naira is miserably low and is due for review as it operates as a five-year cycle according to the law , as the current has been operating since 2019 and this is 2024 so it is structurally due. And beyond that, the value of the naira has declined terribly.
Even before the coming of President Bola Tinubu, the value of Nigerian Currency decreased and his coming made it worse.
Also Tinubu’s policies of so-called subsidy removal and foreign currency exchange rate Unification, the combination of these policies negatively impacted the quality of life of an average Nigerian.
He added that actually what the government did was devaluing the naira using that as an excuse. The combination of these policies has negatively affected the quality of life of the average Nigerian.
Do you mean the removal of fuel subsidies and the unification of foreign currency exchange rates?
Yes, Yes! They call it the unification of the tiers of exchange rates. Actually what the government did is massively devalue the naira using that as an excuse because no reasonable government actionting reasonably leaves its national currency to be determined by the market, not even China.
They said the Import- Export window to determine the exchange rate?
What I am saying is that they will tell you the Import-Export window but every reasonable government should a matter of necessity take care of its national currency not to leave it at the storms of the market particularly in an economy like Nigeria that is import-dependents ,even Chinese didn’t allow their currency at the mercy of market forces ,
The recent exchange rate of naira to dollar today is unrealistic as it reaches between 1450 to 1500 and this is under one year as when President Buhari left office, the official exchange rate of naira to the dollar is less than 400 naira to a dollar and then between six months it reach this level and yet to reach the destination and some charlatans out there are saying the naira is still overvalued, I called them charlatans because they must have spoken from their other part of their heads
But some are blaming Breau D’echange operators for hoarding the foregoing currencies. How do you look at these allegations?
No No! they said that the Naira should further be devalued to lower than what it is now and for goodness Seck what are we manufacturing, when China tinkers with its currency when it brings down the value of its money is for it to have an advantage over its competitors when selling its products outside the country and when we devalued the naira down to this level what are we selling that can give us an advantage, so you are asking your proxies to buy off our assets for nothing because when you have billion dollars you can buy off the Nigerian assets.
Let us look at the issue of minimum wage, Nigerian workers presently can not buy food, can not transport themselves to their workplaces, and the Federal government before the minimum wage review agreed to pay 35000 naira as a palliative to all Federal government workers, did the government fulfil this promise?
I urge you to ask the Federal government workers to see if the government fulfilled that promise, but to the best of my knowledge the government didn’t fulfil that promise, if at all it did, so it did it marginally.
But I am not aware the government consistently or diligently fulfilled that promise and there is no reason for the government to act this way because the money it got from the sale of crude oil went up.
The devaluation of the naira ensured excessive local currency for the government. So the outside government made a lot of money so why would you not pay?
Actually, what did NLC do in that regard?
The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) protested, NLC said we will hold you to your promise and the government refused to pay ,if you can recall we had a two-day warning strike to compel the government to meet up with this commitment
Nobody put the gun on their head as the government to sign a document with NLC in that regard, it was a consensual thing. This is something the government and NLC agreed upon as an interim before the final consensus on the new minimum wage.
Back to the recent issue of minimum wage review, after so much struggle from your site on behalf of workers. The Nigerian government has agreed to set up a tripartite committee that will look at the matter of reviewing the minimum wage. Now what level are you?
Well! The committee has been set up and inaugurated by the Vice President Kashim Shatima on behalf of the President ,so we expect the committee to get to work as quickly as possible because Nigerians are dying.
So is there a time limit for the committee ?
Of Course you know the minimum wage law which brings about the minimum wage is for every five years and this is the fifth year structurally it’s is due, if it exceeds this season it means government is acting on the breach of the law ,ok as I told you that ,by value the minimum wage is long overdue because of the devaluation of Naira(Nigerian currency).
The NLC President was quoted saying that the new salary should be based on the dollar exchange rate considering the fact that the government is sourcing its major revenue in dollars through the sale of crude oil. Do you subscribe to that statement ?
You know I am not in the position to barry the statement of the Congress President ,if he said so he must have being well thought out ,he must have a specient reason for him to have said so,and I have not seeing any one saying what he have said is wrong ,so that makes a lot of meaning to me.
So let us talk about the value of Nigerian currency as currently Nigerian worker is collecting 30,000 as minimum wage ,at the time that Nigerian minimum salary was raised to 30 thousand from 18 000 the inflation was not as high as now ,at this time 30,000
i can not even buy 25 bags of rice. How urgently do you call on the government to look at all this situation, as the present government says it is always listening to public cries ?
Well at the time the minimum wage was Paige at 30,000 the inflation was about 18 percent (but not hundred percent sure ),the exchange rate to a dollar was about 250 naira( not more 30,000 naira) in the parallel market .So you can see now ,we are in a journey from that time to now ,is a harrowing experience for the average Nigerian person who does not have access to the Nigerian public treasury to removing money without accounting for it .
So it is of utmost importance that we quickly fix the new national minimum wage .Congress is concerned that the matter has to wait till today but as I tell you we are putting much pressure to ensure a new national minimum wage quickly .
So sir ,did NLC have any template with regard to the new minimum wage ?
Of Cause ,any time we are going for negotiation ,we have our template but take note that,the template can only be reviewed at negotiating table ,it is when it is revealed , it will be made public but you just quoted NLC president said it should be realistic based on earnings of the government and the economic situation of the country and Nigerian people.
How much was shared between the Federal,States,and local government councils recently ? it increased to trillions and if the country is earning so much and the people are so poor does that make any sense to you ,does that make any sense.
Let us look at another dimension of it .Federal government at a time agreed on a particular amount as minimum wage while the problems are at the states and Local governments level .Some states are yet to implement the 30,000 minimum wage up to this time ?
Yes I agree with that some states up to now are yet to implement the old minimum wage ,it was unfortunate because that figure was arrived at ,by consensus.You know the minimum wage committee comprises representative of the Federal government ,the governors ,the local government councils ,the organised private sectors and even the informal sector ,all issues are considered judiciously ,objectively before the figure is arrived at.
So it is uncharitable for some governors to turn around to say that they could not pay .It was a Criminal offence.
Criminal offence ok, you can take them to court ?
Yes, part of what we want to do now is to make the national minimum wage justiciable ,meaning that ,if you do not pay ,you could be held liable ,you could even pay damages for it.
Comrade, don’t forget that you are in a country where governors even refuse to collect court orders or even refuse to obey court rulings ?
Yes I do appreciate the penchant of government to disobey court orders or to selectively choose to what orders to obey ,which orders not to obey but I want to tell you this inasmuch as we appreciate the immensity of state power ,we do also believe ,there is superior power and that superior power belongs to God, and the people.That is why ,it is said the voice of the people is the voice of God. So they can not continuously hold the people down without consequences, I promise you ,we will hold them to account for any violation .
Whichever State governor refuses to implement the national minimum wage when its signed into law, that integrity should be ready for us .
Ok there is what happened in Imo state ,are you not afraid of its refeat ?
No ,I do appreciate the fact that,the case of Imo was a terrible one and an insult to all of us ,but we are not scared of what happened in Imo .Let me tell you ,we have the will and capacity to fight The issue of Imo should not be a signal to any governor to do that kind of thing ,if any governor try it he will face consequences.
Sir finally Nigeria worker interns of welfare and interns of anything that make him to have confidence and to be comfortable in pursuing his work is not there ,what do you do in this regard ?
In this regard we are fighting for the autonomy of local governments and Judiciary autonomy ,we are fighting for it assiduously ,we are with Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) and National Union of local governments Employees (NULGE) in their campaigns across the country and we are ready to go to any length with JUSUN and NULGE to ensure that,there is autonomy for local government councils and the judiciary at states level ,don’t forget we took this battle to the national Assembly ,we won it there but is at the states house of Assemblies that some states are compromising acting at the base of the governors ,but of course this governors will one day leave power and they will soon find out they are nothing ,so they better give autonomy to local governments councils and Judiciary and be independently founded ,except they do that we can not eliminate crime .
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