Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Ismaila Abubakar, last week ruffled feathers across the economy when he reminded employers in the private sector that the new national minimum wage of N70,000 is mandated by law for payment to the lowest cadre of worker in Nigeria.
He spoke through the Director of Employment and Wages in the Ministry, John Nyamali, at the 13th Annual General Meeting of the Employers Association for Private Employment Agencies of Nigeria, EAPEAN, in Lagos.
According to him: "The minimum wage is now a law, and as a result, it is a punishable crime to pay less than N70,000 to any of its workers. The private employment agencies should make it compulsory in any contract they take from their principals that their workers should not earn less than the minimum wage...the minimum wage is a law, and you can be jailed if you fail to implement it".
On the face of it, the Minister is correct. The new National Minimum Wage is a product of a Bill signed into law by President Bola Tinubu on July 29, 2024. Of course, a law is meant to be obeyed, and everybody is bound by it. The intendment of making the minimum wage a law is to ensure compliance and application of relevant sanctions in any case of default.
Most governments in developed economies are intolerant to any contravention of the minimum wage law because it touches on the poorest and most vulnerable levels of the economy.
In any case, the new N70,000 minimum wage is still among the lowest in the world. Coming at a time that inflationary markers jumped from 12 per cent a few years ago to between 34 and 40 per cent, the new minimum wage is a non-starter. It is pitiable mismatch of the cost of living.
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However, the Nigerian economic structure is so fatally fractured that it is a nightmare trying to implement the national minimum wage by law. Currently, only Edo State is paying the N70,000, which was a wage that outgoing Governor Godwin Obaseki voluntarily awarded workers on the state's payroll.
It is an undeniable fact that even the former N30,000 minimum wage was not being paid by some state and local governments. In May this year, there were shocking reports that Governor Babagana Zulum of Borno State, for instance, paid school headmasters in Southern Borno as little as N10,000, while teachers got N7,500!
The private sector is hardest-hit by Tinubu's draconian economic policies and is reeling from lack of FG's palliative support. Many industries in the private sector are closing shops and more are barely surviving by resorting to owing or stagnating their workers.
This is not surprising as the sharp and steady rise in the cost of fuels, food prices and inflation have continued to erode the carrying capacity of even the above-average citizens. In fact, with the uncontrollable rise of the pump price of petrol since subsidy removal, along with other economic policies fuelling hardship, the gains of the minimum wage of N70,000 have evaporated even before the implementation comes into effect.
The minimum wage law of Nigeria has never been enforced. So long as our economy remains impoverished and disjointed, it is unenforceable.
