By Adedapo Adesanya
Organised labour in Nigeria commenced a nationwide strike as planned on Monday, disrupting electricity supply in the country as well as public school education.
The workers refused to resume work today after the meeting between their leaders and the federal government ended in a deadlock. The last-minute attempt by the National Assembly to avert the industrial action was futile on Sunday night.
Yesterday, Mr Festus Osifo, the President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC); and his counterpart in the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Joe Ajaero; met with Senate President, Mr Godswill Akpabio and Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Tajudeen Abbas. in Abuja.
The meeting was part of efforts by the legislators to persuade aggrieved workers to shelve their planned industrial action for a new minimum wage and reversal of the recent hike in electricity tariff.
However, there was no resolution at the meeting and the labour leaders declared afterwards that, “The strike will kick off as we take their (National Assembly) plea asking us to call off the strike to our various organs.”
The labour unions had said the current minimum wage of N30,000 could no longer cater to the wellbeing of an average Nigerian worker considering the removal of fuel subsidy and its ripple effect.
The unions also lamented that not all governors were paying the current wage award which expired in April 2024, five years after the Minimum Wage Act of 2019 was signed by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
The demand for a new wage was put at around N490,000 but certain quarters, including the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), defended the government’s inability to pay it.
According to stipulations, the Act should be reviewed every five years to meet the contemporary economic demands of workers.
The unions handed the federal government a May 31 deadline for the new minimum wage and declared a nationwide strike beginning from Monday, June 3, 2024, over the government committee’s inability to agree on a new minimum wage and reversal of electricity tariff hike.
Business Post observed that electricity workers have already joined the strike with several people reporting power outages by 2 am on Monday, while public school students in Lagos as well as other states were told to return home.
