N30,000 Minimum Wage Will Cripple States, Say Governors

Zamfara State Governor Abdullahi Yari

The Nigeria Governors' Forum (NGF) says it is extremely unlikely state governors can stand to pay N30,000 as specialists' lowest pay permitted by law. 

Making this known after a crisis meeting in Abuja on Wednesday night, the NGF said states would go bankrupt in the event that they paid laborers the proposed the lowest pay permitted by law. 

Administrator of the Forum Governor Abdulaziz Yari, who read the dispatch after the gathering, said that another board of trustees would be raised to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari over the issue. 

A tripartite panel containing government authorities, agents of the sorted out work and those of the composed private division had prescribed N30,000 as national the lowest pay permitted by law yet the governors proposed N22,500 while the government said it could just manage the cost of N24,000. 

"Following a gathering of the Nigeria Governors' Forum where we thought on the national the lowest pay permitted by law, governors set out to re-strategise and set up together another advisory group to meet with the President indeed, to work out another equation towards rapidly settling the issue related with the proposed N30.000 the lowest pay permitted by law which is impracticable except if work consents to a cutting back of the workforce everywhere throughout the nation or the Federal Government itself acquiesces to the audit of the national income allotment recipe," Yari said. 

"Individuals from the board of trustees who were assigned to see the President incorporate the governors of Lagos, Kebbi, Plateau, Bauchi, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi. Enugu and Kaduna." 

Additionally, the Zamfara representative said that the tripartite advisory group did not think about the situation of the governors. 

"As an individual from the panel, our delegate there said the board of trustees did not take our accommodation of N22,500 in light of the fact that it came late. 

"I am shocked. How might you do this without the contribution of the states in light of the fact that the states are the key partners around here. 

"In this way, a circumstance whereby our report was not taken or considered by the Tripartite Committee … then I don't know how the council needs us to function."