Hope for universal minimum
wage increase dims as
Osinbajo hints at selective
approach
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has said
that the Federal Government may opt for
increasing the remuneration package of
workers in the form of bonuses for select
agencies of government, as against the
universal wage benchmark review option
being proposed by the Nigeria Labour
Congress (NLC).
From the transcript presented to
journalists in Abuja on Tuesday by his
Senior Special Assistant on Media and
Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, Osinbajo
expressed the view at the ongoing
Nigerian Bar Association National
Conference in Lagos on Monday, during a
session titled, ‘Conversation with the
Vice-President’.
Osinbajo noted that though the issue of
increased minimum wage for workers was
a good idea, the government was “in a
bind of sorts”, adding that government
was spending 70 per cent of its revenues
on remuneration and overheads, leaving
less than 30 per cent for capital
expenditure.
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He said, “Sometimes, it is a chicken and
egg situation because in order to increase
revenues, we need to increase
remuneration.
“I think that what we are probably going
to end up doing is what we have done
with some of the parastatals; in other
words, identifying certain government
services that must be remunerated
differently in order to increase
efficiency. One of the revenue generating
agencies, for instance, is the Federal
Inland Revenue Service.
“Improving remuneration, especially
bonuses, would do a lot of good. That we
saw happen in Lagos with the Lagos
Inland Revenue Service, where because
there were bonuses, there was
improvement in revenue and reform.
People were able to do better, even in our
judicial system. Because we paid better;
we remunerated better, people were able
to improve.”
It is not clear how this development will
impact the still-pending negotiation
process between the federal government
and the NLC on reviewing the national
minimum wage upwards.
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