Nigerian workers threaten economic shutdown over minimum wage law

Nigerian workers are threatening to shut down the national economy if parliament pushes through a constitutional amendment to remove the minimum wage from exclusive list and place it under concurrent list.

Items on exclusive list are within the confines of the central government and cannot be tampered with by state governments, whose functions are listed on concurrent lists.

“All labor laws are federal laws and so we will resist, by all means, including shutting the economy industrial action, any attempt to take the minimum wage issue off the exclusive list,” Issa Aremu, deputy president of the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC), one of the country’s two labor centers, told Anadolu Agency.

Nigeria passed a National Minimum Wage Act in February 2011. It was sponsored by President Goodluck Jonathan who was desperate for the support of the workers’ movement to outsmart those against his election the same year.

The law pegs minimum wage (entrance level) at N18,000 (US$112.5) a month, sparking protest from state governments which insisted it was against principles of federalism that Nigeria practices.

The Senate, the upper chamber, is pushing ahead with a constitutional amendment whereby the minimum wage would be removed from the exclusive to the concurrent list.

Aremu accused Nigeria's 36 state governments of being the masquerades behind the “unpopular” amendment which he dismissed as “reactionary, anti-progress and stands rejected by the labor.”