President Bola Tinubu has signed the new N70,000 national minimum wage into law.
The President signed the bill during a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held at the Council Chambers of the Presidential Villa on Monday in Abuja.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Speaker of the House of Representatives Tajudeen Abbas, and other members of the National Assembly leadership joined the FEC for the ceremony.
This marks the first time since the start of the current democratic dispensation that the Council, presided over by the President, has included the leadership of the legislature in a FEC meeting at the Council Chamber.
It was reported that their invitation to the meeting was impromptu.
Their involvement in the council meeting comes amid tension over the planned protest by some Nigerians against the rising cost of living in the country.
Both the legislature and executive have been ramping up efforts to ameliorate the hardship in the country and trying to convince those organizing the protest of the need to call it off.
TheWitness earlier reported that the National Assembly has approved the bill to increase the national minimum wage from N30,000 to N70,000, effectively making it a law.
The Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, announced the approval following the third reading of the bill during a plenary session in Abuja last week.
The bill, which was proposed by President Bola Tinubu after meeting with the heads of organized labour last week, also included a reduction of the review timeline of the minimum wage from 5 years to 3 years.
TheWitness earlier reported that Tinubu and leaders of Organised Labour reached an agreement setting N70,000 as the new minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
Initially, the federal government proposed a sum of N62,000, but labour insisted on N250,000, resulting in a deadlock between both parties.
The truce between the government and labour sides followed a series of talks between labour leaders and the President in the last few weeks after months of failed talks between labour organs and a tripartite committee on minimum wage constituted by the President in January.
The committee, which comprised state and federal governments and the Organised Private Sector, had proposed N62,000 while labour insisted on N250,000 as the new minimum wage for workers who currently earn N30,000 as minimum wage.
Labour had said N30,000 was unsustainable for any worker going by the economic vagaries of inflation and high cost of living which followed the removal of petrol subsidy by the President.
