Osamagbe Imadiyi
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was ridiculed by the Nigeria Labour Congress on Monday for his assertion that labor leaders had betrayed Nigerian workers by agreeing to the N70,000 new minimum wage that the Federal Government, led by President Tinubu, was offering. NLC President Joe Ajaero denied the former president’s accusation of treachery in a statement titled “Under Saint Matthew of Owu,” calling Obasanjo’s comments “uncharitable.” Ajaero noted that the initial amount that labor leaders insisted on and demanded during the protracted negotiation for a new minimum wage was N610,000.
Obasanjo criticized the N70,000 new minimum wage in his book “Nigeria: Past and Future,” which was published on Monday. He said the wage was woefully insufficient to meet workers’ basic needs, such as housing, food, and transportation. He charged that during the minimum wage negotiations, labor leaders put their own interests ahead of the good of the group. NLC President Ajaero, however, responded to him on Monday, saying that Obasanjo was merely restating the arguments made by labor leaders during a negotiation when he referred to the N70,000 minimum wage as egregiously insufficient.
He said, “It was the reason we asked for N610,000, which we had described as the barest acceptable minimum, complete with a breakdown. For unknown reasons, NECA and the government made a counteroffer of N50,000 without specifying how much would go to what. Negotiations eventually came to a standstill as a result, and a strike was only put on hold when President Bola Tinubu took over and offered N70,000, which was several thousand more than the Minimum Wage Committee had suggested. Even though we knew N70,000 was not enough, we chose to take it instead of imposing more hardship on the populace. We needed to lessen the suffering”.
Ajaero clarified that Tinubu’s N70,000 offer was intended to include a number of “incentives,” such as the assurance that talks to establish a new minimum wage could start as early as 2026. According to Ajaero, the government institutions have launched numerous attacks on the NLC under his leadership, including legal action, “to hamstring us: from court injunctions, to harassment by the police and other security services, and even to other hideous acts of intimidation and brutalization of the leadership of the congress. “Obasanjo was challenged by the NLC to do some introspection in order to realize that he was partially a Nigerian leader who had attacked labor leaders while defending the rights of workers.
