- Maximum brouhaha
If many state governors had their way, they would not only reduce the N18,000 minimum wage in the country; they would also reduce their workforce in view of the difficulties they are having in meeting their basic obligation to the workers. The governors made their position known through their umbrella body, the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF). According to their chairman, Governor Abdul’aziz Yari of Zamfara State, the minimum wage was “imposed” on them when oil sold for $126 per barrel and now that price has plummeted to $41, they can no longer pay the amount. The only lone, even if loud voice among the governors, is that of Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State who said, quite emphatically, that he was committed to payment of the N18,000 minimum wage.
According to him, payment of the N18,000 minimum wage in his state “remains sacrosanct to his administration”. Hear him, “in Edo State, we will not only pay the minimum wage, we will pay all wages because I believe that the day I cannot pay salaries, it is time to resign”. He warned his colleagues that “democracy does not run at the convenience and comfort of governors, ministers and presidents”.
We should understand where Oshiomhole is coming from; he is a former president of the Nigeria Labour Congress and so knows the consequences of his colleagues’ position. Thus, Oshiomhole seemed to have said it all on behalf of Nigerian workers. But in spite of Governor Oshiomhole’s soothing balm, the NLC has threatened to demand an increase in the minimum wage, which it says is no longer realistic in the face of the current economic situation.
Rather than tamper with minimum wage, many concerned Nigerians have advised the governors to look into other areas of waste. Some people have stated that even if workers work for free, many of the governors, because of their profligacy, would still run their states aground. Obviously, this shows that the problem is not so much with the workers, but with the governors themselves! Therefore, instead of reducing minimum wage or downsizing, the governors should look inward. For instance, a governor was reported to have about 1,000 special advisers, with escalating cost of maintaining a fleet of vehicles. If huge size of advisers will necessarily translate into positive result, we do not expect such a governor to have problems about ideas that could make him generate funds to meet the government’s obligations.
Moreover, some governors no longer travel by land, but in private jets around the country. There are other areas of reckless spending that suggest that allocation of money to the state is spent as if it is meant for the comfort of the governors at the expense of the others. A good example that needs to be discontinued is the huge money known as security vote that the governors collect and spend without accounting for it. The office of the first lady and inflation of contracts which some people say run into “hundreds and thousands of percentages” should also be stopped. After all, some of the projects for which inflated contracts are awarded are phantom projects, with many of them never executed.
We agree though that things are not the same as when the governors began to pay the minimum wage, but in reality N18,000 is too low as a living wage in Nigeria today. So, to contemplate cutting it is the height of insensitivity. What the present economic situation calls for is rigorous thinking on the part of the governors in reducing the cost of governance. It is in time like this that we know imaginative leaders. The governors can get the laws amended so that they could free themselves from the stranglehold of the Federal Government in the tapping of the natural resources in their states.
Moreover, since states are not equally endowed and standard of living varies from state to state, we wonder why all states must pay the same minimum wage. Most certainly, it appears that the governors’ position in the reduction of minimum wage is largely unpopular, inhuman and should be discarded.
