President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Joe Ajaero, has revealed why organized labour accepted the N70,000 minimum wage during the national minimum wage talks at the President Villa, Abuja.
Ajaero, while fielding questions during the Morning Show programme on Arise television on Friday, explained that during the meeting on the new Minimum wage with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa, the organised labour turned down the offer of an increase in the price of petroleum to accept N70,000 as the new minimum wage.
He equally revealed that after the organized labour had agreed with the president on the Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, alternative, the labour went ahead to negotiate with a team of experts who agreed to convert vehicles to CNG at the rate of N300,000.
The NLC boss added that in a meeting with the government team, the officials rejected the NLC deal and instead announced that conversion of vehicles to CNG would cost N800,000.
It should be recalled that the organised labour, comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress, had insisted on N250,000 as the new minimum wage, but later settled for the offer of N70,000 from the President.
Asked whether the President betrayed the trust of the NLC by increasing the petrol pump price despite the alleged ‘agreement’ with him, Ajaero said: “I have to narrate the scenario to you, and then we now choose the appropriate word, whether it is betrayed, deceit or whatever.
“While we were discussing, we stalemated at N62,000, even the states were saying they wouldn’t pay, so there was a stalemate that took us to Mr. President.
“We insisted on N250,000 and Mr President at the meeting, turned to me and said, ‘Ajaero, you are the person holding my hand from increasing further’.
“And I said increase what? The president said, ‘Since I said the subsidy is gone, we should have gotten the appropriate price. We should have increased. I want to sponsor you people, labour, to travel to these West African countries and know how much they are paying.
“Some are paying N2,000, N1,800, N1,700’. As he announced it, we declined immediately that we were not going to take that sponsorship.
“He said, Okay, I will go to my office for one hour. You guys decide, if you agree for me to increase the price of petroleum products, I will pay you N250,000 minimum wage, if not, you take this N62,000.
“But we said, Mr. President, no, we can’t sit down here to decide in your office, we will take about one week to go back and discuss and get back to you, which was exactly what happened and we adjourned for one week.
“When we reconvened, we made it clear to Mr. President, that we didn’t have any mandate to come there to discuss the price of petroleum products or increase, we were only there to discuss minimum wage and minimum wage alone we were going to discuss. And based on that we accepted 70,000 (Naira)”.
