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As the National Assembly continues deliberation on the new National Minimum Wage bill this week, the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), in clarifying issues on the minimum wage, said it was alien and an aberration to have two national minimum wages.

“It is usually one national minimum wage and we hope this would be corrected by the National Assembly,” the director-general of NECA, Mr. Timothy Olawale, said.

He said NECA as a body believed that it was important to add its voice to the issue of the approval of N27,000 as the New National Minimum Wage by the National Council of State at its last meeting.

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Olawale stated that, “As the title goes, what the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage submitted to the President upon conclusion of its assignment was a recommendation. Ordinarily, a recommendation is not cast in stone, but advisory to the President. The ILO Minimum Wage Setting Mechanism as domesticated in Nigeria permits the National Economic Council and, of course, the National Council of State to take a further look at the recommendations and make their inputs to the President. While it is desirable that they accept and adopt the recommendations of the committee, it is also within their rights to make their own independent recommendations. The process never envisaged a situation of rubber-stamping the recommendations of the Tripartite Committee. The National Minimum Wage process also gives the National Assembly the liberty to tinker with the figure in the interest of the nation and the citizens. Such tinkering could be an upward review of the recommendations, which would be desirable to the workers”.

He further said, “The process of ultimately arriving at a new national minimum wage is all-inclusive. It is part of the same process for the President to transmit a bill to the National Assembly on what he is convinced is appropriate as the minimum wage. It is true that both the recommendations of the Tripartite Committee on national minimum wage of 2000 and 2011 were accepted and passed into law by government, this, however, does not mean it is wrong for the National Council of State to come up with a different figure as their recommendations to the President as they did at the end of their meeting”.

While commenting on the figure recommended by the National Council of State, he stated that, “The figure recommended which is N3,000 less than the recommended figure by the Tripartite Committee comes with its own positives. The reduction will go a long way to lighten the burden of the micro, small and medium-scale employers, which had been our concern hitherto. Granted too, that the exclusion threshold of 25 employees is expected to also take care of them”.

Olawale, while advising on the way forward averred that, “The final leg of the process is the President’s assent or withholding of same to the outcome of the exercise by our lawmakers. The major concern of the labour movement should now be the lobbying of the legislators: first to ensure they give speedy attention to the bill which has been transmitted to them and secondly, to lobby them on their desirable outcomes. This is not against the law or guiding principles of National Minimum Wage Setting Mechanism”.