Everything In Nigeria Seems To Have Gone Up Except Wage – Ajaero

Comrade Joe Ajaero is the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). In this interview he speaks about the tussle between labour and the Federal Government on minimum wage matter, why the government must check inflation, faults government’s claim that things have improved in the country, among other issues.

What is the current position with the minimum wage?

The position of Organized Labour under the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC) as stated at the Eagle Square during May Day celebrations is that if by end of May, negotiations are not concluded, we may not be able to guarantee industrial peace in the country. The old minimum wage expired on April 18; that was before May Day.

Ordinarily, a new regime of minimum wage ought to have started immediately after that. As we speak today, there is no minimum wage law in existence in the country. And we ought to have finished the negotiation. The last minimum wage lasted for five years. And for you to wait until after five years before you can do anything serious is a problem. In January, they inaugurated the minimum wage committee. Though, that came late. Ordinarily, it should have been around October last year. While there was delay, we didn’t understand. We started putting pressure. And you don’t need to put pressure for things that statutorily should be done. So, after much pressure, they inaugurated the committee. And Mr. President gave them the mandate to provide a living wage for Nigeria. We met a couple of times, had public hearings across the whole six geopolitical zones, and came back to the meeting after collating all the data. And then the committee asked Labour to send their own report and demands, which we collated from all 36 states. The NLC and TUC met and harmonized the demand of minimum wage to be N615,000; and forwarded to them. Between that time until today, nothing was done. We couldn’t bear it any longer because in our last meeting, we agreed on how to ensure that we conclude even before May Day so that Mr. President would take our demand to the National Assembly for a law to be enacted to seal the new minimum wage.

READ ALSO; How Can A Right Thinking Person Ask For N450,000 As Minimum Wage – Former NLC President Blasts Joe Ajaero

That was the situation at that time. However, just yesterday, we received a letter about a meeting next week on Wednesday. That is where we are now on the issue of National Minimum wage.

Aside the N615,000 minimum wage, what else is Labour demanding from government?

Many may not understand the economic situation we are talking about. When the subsidy was removed, the government told us to go and negotiate a wage. Negotiating a wage is not something that is done immediately. We’ve now watched the impact of the removal of subsidy, and it has dawned on every one of us. And it wasn’t only the removal of the subsidy, they also went into price fixing, the price of fuel went up to over N700 per litre. With that, we can tell you clearly how much it costs a worker to go to work. We know how much a bag of rice is being sold? So, the cost of all this has dawned on us and we have prepared what it takes for a worker to go to work and survive with a family of four. We also came up with this analysis and based it on some of the global experiences. The UN position is that nobody can survive on less than $2 per day. And if you take it from that angle for a family of six, giving them two dollars per meal, in a day, you’ll have $12 and about $360 in a month. I’ll leave the calculation for us to do. Let us come to the issue of the cost-of-living index which we normally use. We gave the government a breakdown; for feeding, we gave everybody in that family N500 per meal. If you give everybody in a family of six N500 naira per meal, one person will get N1,500 per meal in a day. And for the six people, they are going to have about N270,000 for feeding in a month. We looked at about N40,000 for accommodation, for education for 4 children, we put N50,000 assuming that your children should not go to private schools because you can’t do that with that amount of money. For Medicare, assuming there’s no surgery or serious medical issue, we put N50,000. For electricity, we put N20,000. That was even before this electricity tariff increase. And you discover that if today, you buy a token of N20,000, it no longer lasts as much as before. For Gas/kerosene, considering that people refill every two weeks, at the cost of about N15,000 – N17,000 for 12.5kg cylinder, we estimated about N30,000 a month. All these are how we arrived at the sum of N615,000. Note that we didn’t add expenses like communication, tithes/offerings in church or any other social obligation. Now we brought it out for negotiation. However, in doing this, we said that if the government can check all these other issues like the inflationary rate and the value of our currency, then we can adjust our demands. The labour movement wouldn’t have asked for more than N200,000 before the removal of subsidy. Apart from transportation and house rent, you know the cost of living. A bag of rice now costs over N70,000, bread and other food items are very expensive too. They told us that they are going to make more money with removal of subsidy and since they made more money, inflation seemed to be going up unchecked for almost a year. We can shift from where we are if those things could be taken care of. We did not even factor in the numerous taxes in our demand. And we are coming from a country where there is no social safety net. No transportation or Medicare. Even capitalist countries of the world make provision for all of these things. But here in Nigeria, you generate your own power with generating sets, provide your own water and almost everything. Therefore, it saddens us when we’re told on a daily basis that the N615,000 demand is not realistic or that it’ll cause inflation. Everything in Nigeria seems to have gone up except the wage which remains constant. We told the government that if we were to present that demand afresh, it will be higher and if things continue this way in few months’ time, N1 million may not be enough. The government should check inflation and other economic challenges that is causing the rise in the cost of living. For instance, what was done about tariff increase? Before increasing the tariff in the power sector, they looked at two major factors; inflation and the value of the currency before announcing the tariff adjustment in Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). Now, each time they do these things, it equally creates inflation which prompts them to go for another tariff increase. The worker continues to bear the brunt.

The issue of no work, no pay, strike actions etcetera, why should workers be paid for the period they’re not working. Would pay-per hour be more sustainable?

If you denominate our wages per hour, it will result in a case of “1 hour – No pay”. This is because with the wage currently being paid, it wouldn’t even equate to N20 per hour. How I wish the minimum wage was reviewed per hour based on international standards.

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On the other hand, the issue of “No work- No pay” did not talk about “No pay – No work”. Before now, the law in existence was master-server relationship where we had the master as the superior without workers right.

However, we have gone past that era, and it is one of the things that we celebrate on May Day; the independence and freedom for workers that gave them just 8 hours work. They’re no longer slaves. Any other time beyond 8 hours is considered overtime and can equally be negotiated. Most other countries around the world with the No work – No pay policy have a social safety net, unemployment benefits and even old people’s benefits. But here in Nigeria, the case is different. Most of the crises we have in Nigeria is based on government’s refusal to pay or to pay appropriately. For instance, they’ve refused to pay the new minimum age. Even the wage award we agreed upon until the new minimum wage is announced, the last time they paid was in February. And all these were signed agreements. But sadly, agreements in Nigeria are never obeyed. Check the cause of strikes and industrial actions whether from Labour or any other institution, it is a result of the government not fulfilling the agreements it had signed in the past. Nevertheless, in industrial relations, there is what we call power relations which is critical in the sense that if a worker knows that if he doesn’t come to work today, his employer won’t pay him, he will come to work. And if an employer knows that if he does something wrong, his workers may not come to work, he will think twice before doing that thing. That is where the Union acquires power to respond and even management has their own powers to respond. When you balance this power relation well, there is usually harmony in that industrial climate.

FG claims that life is getting better and that its reforms are yielding positive results. What is your take on this?

We all know that these claims are not true. The dollar was around N700 as of May 2023, when the present administration came on board, but currently, it is about N1400, is that getting better. We were buying fuel at around N185 when this present administration came on board, but currently, fuel is being sold for above N900 in areas where it is available. I don’t know whether that is the calculation of things getting better. A bag of Rice was around N30,000 in May last year, today it’s about N75,000. There’s no commodity that hasn’t risen more than 100 percent within one year. I wouldn’t be the person to say that things are getting better, it’s left for Nigerians to judge. When we hit the streets to demonstrate how dire the situation is, we were called names. The main essence of governance is for public good, when you deviate and call people names, it becomes a different thing. The response from President Bola Tinubu then was that we should wait for them at the polls in 2027. As a Student Union leader back then, we faced the Babangida government, after so many days of action, he responded positively and said that he was going to create one million jobs. That was when he created new agencies, including Road Safety, to meet up with his promise of creating one million jobs to ease the suffering of the masses. But the response in the case of President Tinubu was for us to wait for him at the polls in 2027. We didn’t want to join issues with him. Many Nigerians don’t have what to eat for their next meal and die as a result of that. As Organized Labour, we have to convey the message that people are suffering. I don’t agree with you as a Nigerian that anything has got better; employment is not there, companies are folding in the private sector, they cannot meet up with even the cost of energy, coupled with insecurity and all that. However, in all of this, what is being paid to those in the National Assembly has improved. People from that class are the ones claiming that life is getting better.

Is the NLC engaging state governors on the minimum wage?

Yes, we engage the state and Federal together. The state governors fall under sub-nationals. Six governors represent the geopolitical zones at the negotiating meeting. However, what the Federal Government did was to select the governors that were either not paying or not paying enough to be on that committee. The progressive governors in terms of payment of minimum wage are not in the committee and we’ve been asking why to select these ones that are not paying the existing minimum wage religiously to be at the negotiation. However, they represent other governors and report to them from time to time. Some of them have equally shown interest in paying. I was in Edo when the governor there said that he is starting payment of N70,000 until negotiations are concluded. He also said that he’ll pay whatever is agreed at the national level. We didn’t see this as politics because when the minimum wage was N30,000, he was paying N40,000. Such a person has the willingness to pay even higher than the agreed minimum wage. These are the kind of governors that understand the value of the productivity of workers.

Lagos/Calabar Coastal Road…Is the NLC in agreement with the Federal Government considering th level of hardship and the perilous state of th internal roads.

Every government has to look for a way of diversifying its economy, and if we’re talking about the Blue economy in the classical sense of it, we can even run the country based on what is obtained from the sea and the coastal states. Most countries are feeding by it. If that is the angle that the Federal Government is exploring to reduce the over-dependency on oil and gas, then it is okay. However, apart from the transportation aspect of the blue economy alone, there are other areas. Even in Energy, people are going green and there is emphasis on leaving oil and gas because of the climatic effect to explore generating power through hydro and other sources. If all these are the intention of the Federal Government, so be it. But if there are other motives, because some are challenging the cost of the contract and the contractor assigned for it. However, a country like Nigeria would be stronger if it effectively explores its blue economy. However, for the Highway project, we need to follow it up and understand and assess the level of damage that it will cause on the people living in the coastal lines to mitigate the damage. I’m among the people that support the diversification of the economy; it shouldn’t be oil alone, because it may soon dry. But the people must be carried along in the process to know that the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages.

Is the NLC reactive rather than being proactive? Why didn’t labour protest the subsidy removal?

We protested when they removed the subsidy. There were series of actions against their so-called injunction in court before we got some agreements. The first agreement we got was to deemphasize on PMS. That was when we got the agreement on CNG energy. And when we came out with the proposal on CNG, and they asked us what the meaning of CNG was, nobody at the present time understood the meaning of CNG. Of course, of late, they’re trying to mount it as part of their achievement. We explained to them that it is Compressed Natural Gas and that the gas deposit we have in the country today is enough to keep the country moving for the next 500 years. And all you need is just a conversion kit, and the cost of CNG is far cheaper. When people are filling their tank now with N10,000, you don’t need up to 3,000 to fill your tank on CNG gas. You can still run your PMS and CNG depending on the one that is available. And this doesn’t take up to three months for you to bring in conversion kits and then bring in some buses that are CNG driven, to engage them in mass public transportation system. We came up with all those proposals. It wasn’t from them. But one year after, they have not done it? We went further to get some people who can bring in this conversion kit. In fact, they told us that if we get, that they have gotten grant to give to workers, you know, at the cost of about N320,000 which will be paid over three years for the conversion kits. We took this to the government, but they brought us their own proposal, which was about N800,000 for the conversion. That was when we saw that they’ve made the whole essence of the CNG to be for profit motive from the drivers of the state. That was why we now said, ok, you drive it, but between that time and now, there’s no CNG boss running the streets of Lagos or Abuja or whatever; apart from Edo where over 5,000 vehicles are running on CNG in Benin. So, it’s not only the issue of protesting, but we also make proposals on all the subject matters, we made proposals to them. We also met with INNOSON, and he started producing vehicles running on CNG, but the government is not engaging him. And he said he’s not going to give them any in advance and wait for them to pay him because he has learned from experience. We met some other companies because the NLC wouldn’t be a company or a contractor, but we tried to prove to them that even in Nigeria here, there are people who can work on this.