The Nigeria Labour Congress expressed its displeasure on Wednesday over the fact that over thirty states, or roughly 90% of the states, have failed to pay the wage award as agreed upon by organized labor and the federal government.
The National Labor Council made this statement in response to threats made by Federal Civil Service retirees who were not getting paid by the government for their wage awards, and who planned to stage a national protest.
Labour leaders in Sokoto, Kano, Benue, and Bayelsa states on Wednesday that their state governments had no paid the wage award, while Gombe, Ogun, and Osun were paying N15,000 or N10,000.
An interview with Chris Onyeka, the Assistant General Secretary of the NLC, stated that state governors abandoned negotiations when they decided to give workers N10,000 on their own without consulting anyone.
One of the agreements reached by organized labor and the federal government to lessen the impact of the removal of subsidies on Premium Motor Spirit, or gasoline, was the payment of wage awards to workers.The Federal Government agreed to pay a N35,000 wage award to workers for six months and review the minimum wage in 2024 as part of an agreement with the NLC and Trade Union Congress in 2023.President Bola Tinubu of Niger State made a request to state governors on Tuesday, urging them to keep paying their workforces the wage award until discussions on a new minimum wage were finished.However, the Assistant General Secretary of the NLC bemoaned to one of our correspondents on Wednesday that nearly 90% of states—representing more than 30 states—were failing to pay their workers the wage award.Roughly ninety percent of the states have not made wage awards. Although some states I am aware of have chosen to award workers N10,000, wage awards are not made in a vacuum.”There is a procedure for that. A negotiation with the employees is required. A wage award is neither a charity nor a dash out. Onyeka said, “The process has to be inclusive.”