Barely 48 hours after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s directive, the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, on Thursday, 6 June, 2024 submitted the estimated cost implications of implementing a new national minimum wage to him.
Edun, along with the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Atiku Bagudu, handed Tinubu the cost implication of the new minimum wage in his office at the presidential villa in Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of power
The Finance Minister speaking with State House correspondents after meeting with the President, said, “There is no cause for alarm.”
Recall that Tinubu had ordered Edun to come up with the cost implication of the new minimum wage.
Although details of the cost implication are yet to be made public as the time of filing in this report, the report is said to have outlined several potential new minimum wage levels along with the anticipated fiscal impacts on the federal budget of each option.
The development comes after Organised Labour shut down the economy on Monday, 3 June, 2024, over the failure of the Nigerian government to implement a new minimum wage and April’s electricity tariff hike reversal.
However, on Tuesday, 4 June, 2024, the nationwide strikewas suspended by the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) extracting commitment from the federal government to resume negotiations to arrive at the new minimum wage.
