Nigerians to receive 52,000N minimum wage

The Minister of Labour and Productivity, Prince Adetokunbo Kayode (SAN), has assured that the minimum wage being demanded by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC),  for civil servants would be paid. He, however,  called for extreme patience and understanding from Nigerians because of the process it would pass through before it could be implemented.

Kayode, who spoke at a meeting with the management and staff of the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies  in Ilorin, yesterday, during an official visit, said already a special tripartite negotiating committee had been set up to discuss the minimum wage issue.

"The Federal Government is not afraid of minimum wage, we cannot run away from it, left to me, workers even deserve more than what the labour leaders are asking. I would have paid it since, but the process is long and cumbersome,’’he said.

The minister added that, ''Before the demand could be implemented as the minimum wage, after the approval by the committee, then it would pass through the National Assembly, it has to be legalised, before it could get to the hands of workers. I cannot be specific on when it would manifest, but definitely it would take time. So, Nigerians have to be very patience and understanding.’’

The minister who described President Umaru  Yar' Adua as a very honest leader with lots of passion for the masses, added that the operation of the present administration was premised on bridging the communication gap between the government and the people and also implementing the laws to the letter.

He argued that this strategy had really paid off for him as no issue was strange to him at any point in time.

The minister also lamented over the difficulties in implementing government policies because of what he described as very inefficient system the administration inherited.

According to him, ''it is not just enough criticising the policies of the government, you will wail for this country if you ever know how difficult it is to implement government policies because of the inefficient policies we have.

"I feel it is better to provide better alternatives to governance rather than just condemning the policies or agenda as it were,’’ he stressed.

The minister after inspecting the institute however commended the management and staff of MINILS under the leadership of the Director General Dr John Olanrewaju for what he described as excellent performance saying that if the president had personally visited he would have awarded the DG OFR .

Earlier in his address, The Director General of MINILS Dr John Olanrewaju said the support he has received from the ministry in the last three years has facilitated the transformation process in the institute.

"As an organization with the express mandate to provide labour education to nigerian workers, the institute is currently involved in a number of processes designed to raise its capacity to deliver on its mandate.This process has involved infrastructural development, special staff training, provision of state-of-the-art facilities, institutional materials and updating of institutes’s general curriculum’’he said .

Dr Olanrewaju who noted that there is a major effort at making the institute a regional training centre said since inception over two decades ago,more than twenty thousand nigerian workers have benefitted from its educational capacity building activities.