Last week,president Buhari inaugurated a committee to review the current minimum wage in Nigeria. The inauguration took place at the castle chambers.

The current minimum wage has expired and the executive intends to send an executive bill to the senate once the committee submits their report. Workers in Nigeria are considered as endangered species in our polity mainly the state and LG workers. While countries like chad,ecuador and estonia pay $1250, $5125, $6534 as wage base,Nigeria pays $59,unarguably the least in the world..

Truth is the minimum wage increment has never helped an average Nigerian worker and this whole set up like the ones done by previous governments as far as am concerned is a political charade that will not bring any lasting solution to the problem of an average Nigerian worker for so many obvious reasons.

There's a structural disalignment in the definition of what minimum wage is. Its about the minimum you can place a worker in the sector he is working. Instead of been a wage base,FG is calculating it on incremental basis. We see it as salary increase and that is our major problem. The main reason why I called this a political charade is what constitutional provision mandates the FG to set up such committee. Its the job of the national wage committee to send a bill to the national assembly.

What the FG should be doing to help Nigerian workers is not just coming up with a new wage base because even the current 18000 is not even paid by most states.In the southeast here,3 states are owing,namely,Abia,5-9 months,ebonyi ,4months,Imo,6months.Delta,akwaibom,adamawa,Kaduna,kwara,to mention just a few are all owing. Its a good thing they are part of the committee so they dont come out to say they weren't part of the negotiation even oshiomole,a former leader was owing before he left.

The issue of minimum wage is on the exclusive list but its the only issue federal government has allowed to be on the concurrent list. No state government has paid minimum wage as at when due and even when they do,how much are they paying kwanu? Let the salary of these workers be charged directly and deducted at source just like the primary school teachers own are been paid by FG. If the money for the salary of these workers in the state and LG is paid directly to them from the FG account,it will be worth more to them than all these political statements government make whenever elections are around the corner.

How can this be achieved? First,remove the"federal civil servant" status. Those who work in state and LG,they all have the same job description. Mind you,we haven't started talking about parastatals or LG.issues of water supply,power been handled by parastatals are quiet crippled cos they are not been taken care of. Its on the exclusive list of FG and no state or LG can argue about it.why then is the FG closing their eyes and reducing the issue to a concurrent list item and thats why when states can't pay,nothing will be done about it.

Labour unions have also failed in the discharge of their duty and its high time they start thinking about the welfare of an average Nigerian worker than hobnobbing with the government

Hmmm