- The letters were read by Tajudeen Abbas, speaker of the house; and Senate President Godswill Akpabio during plenary on Tuesday.
- The bill seeks to formalise the N70,000 minimum wage recently agreed between the federal government and organised labour.
President Bola Tinubu has on Tuesday sent a bill to the House of Representatives, proposing a new national minimum wage of ₦70,000 for Nigerian workers.
This move follows a recent agreement between the President and Organised Labour leaders, reached last Thursday, which established the new minimum wage amount.
Information Minister Mohammed Idris had said “the new national minimum that Mr President is expected to submit to the National Assembly is ₦70,000”.
The truce between the government and labour sides followed a series of talks between labour leaders and the President in the last few weeks after months of failed talks between labour organs and a tripartite committee on minimum wage constituted by the President in January.
The committee, which comprised state and federal governments and the Organised Private Sector, had proposed ₦62,000 while labour insisted on ₦250,000 as the new minimum wage for workers who currently earn ₦30,000 as minimum wage.
Labour had said ₦30,000 was unsustainable for any worker going by the economic vagaries of inflation and high cost of living which followed the removal of petrol subsidy by the President.
Despite its initial insistence on ₦250,000 as the new minimum wage, Labour accepted the President’s offer of ₦70,000 last Thursday.
The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, said Labour accepted ₦70,000 and rejected a proposal by President Bola Tinubu to pay ₦250,000 minimum wage on a condition to increase petrol prices.
He also said Labour agreed to the ₦70,000 offer because minimum wage won’t be reviewed once in five years anymore but once every three years.
The transmission of the wage bill came about six weeks after the President said in his Democracy Day speech on June 12, 2024, that an executive bill on the new national minimum wage for workers would be sent to the National Assembly for passage.