President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday transmitted the N70,000 new National Minimum Wage Bill to the National Assembly for consideration.
Recall that the president had in a recent meeting with labour leaders promised to send a Bill to the National Assembly for the minimum wage for workers in the county to be reviewed upward.
The bill sent to the Senate on Tuesday by the president seeks to legalise the N70,000 minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
In a letter read by the Senate president, Godswill Akpabio, during plenary, Tinubu asked the upper chamber to expedite consideration on the Bill.
Meanwhile, the Bill scaled second and third reading in both the two chambers of the National Assembly, minutes after it was transmitted by the president and thereafter passed separately by the two chambers.
President Tinubu is expected to sign the bill into law after it has been passed to him in the Aso Rock Presidential Villa.
Earlier in his letter separately sent to the Senate and the House of Representatives requesting expeditious consideration of a bill for an Act to amend the National Minimum Wage Act, 2019 to increase the National Minimum Wage from N30,000 to N70,000, the president asked the lawmakers to reduce the time for periodic review of the national minimum wage from five years to three years and related matters.
Tinubu and the leadership of the organised labour last Thursday agreed on N70,000 as the new minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
The agreement followed a series of talks between labour leaders and the president in the last few weeks after months of failed talks between labour and a tripartite committee on minimum wage constituted by the President in January.
The committee, which comprised state and federal governments and the organised private sector, had proposed N62,000 while labour insisted on N250,000 as the new minimum wage for workers who currently earn N30,000 as minimum wage.
Labour had said N30,000 was unsustainable for workers, considering the current economic realities and high cost of living resulting from the removal of petrol subsidy by the president.
President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Joe Ajaero said labour accepted N70,000 and rejected a proposal by President Tinubu to pay N250,000 minimum wage on a condition to increase petrol prices.
Ajarro also said labour accepted the N70,000 offer because minimum wage won’t be reviewed once in five years anymore but once every three years.
