The Nigeria Labour Congress has issued a stern warning to state governments and other employers of labour, threatening decisive action against those who fail to implement the N70,000 national minimum wage and the corresponding salary adjustments by the end of the first quarter of 2025.
The warning was made by the President of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, Mohammed Ibrahim, during the association’s National Leadership Retreat in Abuja on Wednesday.
Ibrahim, who also serves as the National Internal Auditor of the NLC, emphasised that state governments and institutions delaying or manipulating wage payments would face serious consequences.
Addressing journalists, Ibrahim criticised the insincerity of some state governments and employers, accusing them of merely treating the wage increase as an “award” without proper implementation.
“The national minimum wage has been signed into law, and payments should have commenced nationwide. However, in most institutions and states, what they did was just to announce a figure without truly implementing it,” he said.
He noted that the intervention of the NLC had already forced some state governments to rush into agreements, many of which, he described, as “kangaroo agreements that have not seen the light of day.”
He said, “But I am happy that the NLC is not sleeping on this matter and that we have been engaging. And you can see that it was only when the NLC gave the directive that any state government that refused to implement the national minimum wage should face a strike, that you started seeing different state governors rushing to sign. Most of them are even kangaroo agreements that have not seen the light of day.”
Ibrahim assured Nigerian workers that the NLC would not relent in its fight for full compliance.
“But going forward, I can assure you, because I am the National Internal Auditor of the NLC and at the level of leadership, we are taking very stringent measures to ensure that between now and the end of this first quarter, any state or employer of labour that refuses to implement the national minimum wage and refuses to adjust workers’ salaries accordingly will face the consequences. The labour laws are there, and we have all that it takes to enforce our rights against those employers,” he said.