After weeks of back and forth between the representatives of government, Oganised Private Sector (OPS), and the Organised Labour, the Nigerian government recently approved a new national minimum wage of N70,000.
Tribune Online reports that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Monday, assented to the minimum wage bill forwarded to the National Assembly and speedily passed last week.
In this article, my focus is never the words on the street over the new development, but taking a look at different times the country has reviewed its minimum wage over the years.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the Nigerian economy dealt with structural changes needed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and this caused inflation and devaluation of currency, and also negatively affected real wages. This was a factor that led to the occasional need to increase minimum wage.
Shehu Shagari, 1981
The first minimum wage in Nigeria was introduced in 1981 under the administration of Shehu Shagari, and it applied to those who were fully employed, however, it exempted seasonal workers and those who worked in firms that had below 50 workers.
The wage rate was N125 monthly at the time when one dollar was N0.61. This action was initiated by the need to eradicate the wide economic gaps and improve the standard of living of the Nigerian labour force.
General Ibrahim Babangida, 1991
10 years after the Shagari era, precisely in 1991, the wage rate was increased to N250 monthly. The reason for this revision was due to the prevalent inflation and other economic setbacks and its effect on the overall well-being of employees in the country.
General Abdusalami Abubakar, 1998
The minimum wage increased to N3,000 monthly under the administration of General Abdulsalami Abubakar in 1998. The administration did this as a result of political unrest and problems in the economy which led to financial hardship that workers in the economy were faced with.
President Olusegun Obasanjo, 1999
In the year 1999, the civilian authority came back into power and the President at the time, Olusegun Obasanjo increased the wage of federal employees to N5,500 and that of workers under the state government to N4,500. This difference made it clear that there was a clear gap in the economic efficiencies of the federal government and state government.
President Goodluck Jonathan, 2011
Under his administration, in 2011, the minimum wage increased to N18,000 per month because of the intervention of and the requests made by the labour union for employees to have access to better living standards, and a decrease in the cost of living.
President Muhammadu Buhari, 2019
In 2019, the minimum wage was reviewed to N30,000 under President Buhari’s administration until recently before the narrative changed again. The wage was increased because the Nigerian people, especially the labour union, fought against the previous wage through strikes because it could not meet their basic needs. The wage was reviewed when the President Buhari signed another minimum wage bill into law.
With this new law, the union was still skeptical about how well it could sustain them judging by the prevalence of unemployment, inflation, and instability in oil prices.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, 2024
The new minimum wage in Nigeria under the current administration of President Tinubu is N70,000, and the reason for this increment is the inability of the previous minimum wage to sustain workers in Nigeria of today’s reality, judging by the persistent increase in the prices of goods and services.
Also, the workers claimed the then wage deprived them of the ability to afford a good and balanced life; over the years. This was why the labour union moved the motion for an increase in minimum wage and later settled with the government for N70,000.
Conclusively, the common factor that exists in the rationale behind the review of the minimum wage, from 1981 till date is the need to improve the overall well-being of individuals in the midst of economic hardship caused by inflation, increase in unemployment, instability in oil prices and foreign exchange volatility, among others.
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