Lukman Olabiyi
Metropolitan Diocese of Ikeja, Methodist Church Nigeria, has told the Federal Government not to see recent minimum wage increment as a favour to workers but a reasonable level of remuneration for their labour.
This was contained in a communique issued at the end of the third annual synod at Ikorodu Road Methodist Church, Mushin, Lagos.
The synod Secretary, Rev. Timothy Olatunji, Lay President, Frederick Ogunjuboun and the Bishop, Metropolitan Diocese of Ikeja, Rt. Rev. Stephen Adegbite respectively, thanked President Muhammadu Buhari and all stakeholders, including the National Assembly and labour unions, on the recent Minimum Wage Bill which has been signed into law.
It called on state governments to ensure the new minimum wage of N30,000 is paid without a hitch as workers deserve some reasonable level of remuneration for their labour.
The synod also called on all tiers of government to ensure prompt payment of pensions and allowances and other outstandings without any delay.
However, the synod frowned at the escalating cases of killings of innocent citizens mainly in, but not limited to the northern parts of Nigeria, especially in places like Kajuru in Kaduna State, Zamfara, Taraba, Borno, Plateau, Yobe and Adamawa states.
“We call on the Federal Government to rise to the occasion and fight this sad development decisively as this should not be allowed to continue to fester. The time to act is now,” the church said.
Meanwhile, Chairman of Senate Committee on Local Content, Solomon Adeola, has restated his commitment to enhance and improve on the condition of workers genuinely engaged in productive activities as well as ensure that Nigerians are not denied their jobs through expatriate employment.
In a May Day message to celebrate workers, Adeola who was the South West representative in the Senate Ad-Hoc Committee on Minimum Wage that approved the passage of the bill for a N30,000 national minimum wage, said he is focused on human development for productive purposes.
He added that over the years, as a legislator from the state to the federal level, he has facilitated trainings for thousands of persons that are mostly engaged in productive labour.
“My commitment to the dignity of labour informs my usual inclusion of skills acquisition and entrepreneur trainings in my zonal intervention programmes and the facilitation of productive equipment for some of my constituents to be productively and profitably engaged. I am less interested in putting up structures which fall under the executive purview. I prefer to develop human beings to make human impacts,” he said.