MAN Reacts to Announcement on Minimum Wage, Urges Federal Government to Assist OPS on Implementation as Promised by Mr. President

It has just been announced that President Bola Tinubu approved a new minimum wage of N70,000 for Nigerian workers and pledged to review the national minimum wage law every three years. The President also promised to find ways to assist the private sector and the sub-nationals to pay the minimum wage.

As you are aware, the final outcome of the tripartite committee comprising, the government, labour and the private sector, was a stalemate at N62,000 offered by the federal government and the private sector on the one hand, and N250,000 by labour on the other.

This positive development is the outcome of further negotiations between government and labour, with the intervention of Mr. President. So one should consider that we have gotten to the end of the long drawn negotiations and that going forward, we shall have accelerated conclusion of the issue of minimum wage. We commend Mr. President for achieving this breakthrough and look forward to the promised assistance.

On the side of the private sector, we should hold on to the promise of Mr. President that the federal government will find a way to assist us to pay the minimum wage agreed with Labour. In this regards, I would assume that reference would be made to the demands made by the Organised Private Sector at the concluding stage of the tripartite negotiations.

We had intimated the committee with the challenges confronting businesses in the private sector and that there was the need to ameliorate those challenges in order to improve the capacity of our members to pay the minimum wage that we offered. We maintained that those binding constraints may constitute impediments to the full compliance of our member when the minimum wage is signed into law.

So, the assumption is that Mr. President will give expedited consideration to those challenges and take necessary steps to address them. This will go a long way in onboarding the private sector in the new agreement on the minimum wage.

To this end, we presented a list of demands including the following:

1) SMEs and MSMEs should be exempted from compliance in view of their incapacity and prevailing operational challenges.

2) CBN redemptions of all validly transacted outstanding forex forwards for companies in the productive sector.

3) The reversal of increase in electricity tariffs OR only 100% increase in electricity tariff for minimum of 20 hours of supply.

4) Duty exemption on imported conversion kits and government subsidy on procurement of same.

5) A freeze on introduction of new taxes on businesses for the next five years

6) Fixed rate of N800 for the assessment of import duty on all production inputs.

7) Revisit of the recent Financial Reporting Council regulation to curtail its application to private businesses.

8) Discontinuation of the Price Verification Portal as it is inimical to the smooth operation of businesses and the basis for setting it up no longer exist. This has been implemented by the CBN.

We are optimistic that the positive atmosphere created by the recent agreement between government and Labour would facilitate speedy consideration and acceptance of aforementioned.

Segun Ajayi-Kadir, mni
Director General