As of March 2024, Nigeria’s inflation rate stood at 33.20%. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) claims that raising the minimum pay for civil officials from N30,000 to N615,000 will not make the situation worse.
“If you look today, from May 2023 to date, revenue from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) to the state governments has tripled,” TUC President, Festus Osifo, said on Channels Television’s Morning Brief breakfast programme on Wednesday.
“This means the state government has more money to build roads and schools to purchase other items.
“The most critical aspect of production is labour. It is for you to take part of the money and pay workers. That won’t increase inflation because the money will be spent anyway; if you don’t give it to workers, it will be spent on other projects.
“Giving workers what is due them won’t necessarily worsen inflation.”
The TUC boss said the Organised Labour proposed N615,000 as the new minimum wage for workers to confront current socio-economic realities, a view backed by his counterpart in the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero.