Babatunde Fashola, a former minister of works and housing, believes the National Assembly can only pass rules governing workers’ minimum wages, not their incomes.
Fashola stated in an article titled ‘Minimum Wage Review – My Takeaway’ that the constitution simply specifies law; what is on the exclusive-legislative list is the country’s minimum wage.
According to him, a person getting a salary gets paid a set sum over time, but a person earning a wage is paid by the hour.
Recall that organised labour and the federal government have yet to agree on a higher minimum salary above the present N30,000. While the federal government has proposed to pay N62,000, organised labour has demanded N250,000.
He said:
“In my recent monograph, ‘The Nigerian Public Discourse: The Interplay of Empirical Evidence and Hyperbole’, I had made the point at page 89 that the word used in item 34 of the Exclusive Legislative list is minimum wage.
“It does not talk about salaries. I further stated that ‘…it has also been shown, wages and salaries are different and should not be conflated.’ I posited that ‘…efforts to improve minimum wage must be that and nothing more. It must not translate to a salary overhaul by accident’.
“Therefore, it seems obvious from this definition that by making a law in Section 3(1) of the Minimum Wage Act that the minimum wage of N30,000 shall be paid monthly, the NASS may have acted unconstitutionally by legislating on a SALARY (monthly payment) when they only have power to legislate on WAGES, an hourly payment.
“This is important while the conversation on minimum wage is being had in 2024 because in Section 3(4), the minimum wage ‘shall be reviewed in line with the provisions of this Act’ which includes Section 3(1) that has prescribed a monthly amount instead of an hourly wage.
“If we follow the proper definition of wages as an hourly rate and apply the global method for computing it, which is to divide the gross annual sum by 52 weeks, and further by 40 hours recommended per week, we will have for Nigeria a minimum wage that is not N30,000 per month, but rather N30,000 X 12 (months) = N36,000 divided by 52 (weeks) = N6,923.07 divided by 40 (hours), which will give a minimum wage of N173.07 per hour.
“What we have done is to erroneously fix monthly minimum salaries as wages, and then effect consequential adjustment for all other SALARY EARNERS, which results in a bloated compensation wage that employees find difficult to meet.”
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cc: Vanguard Ng
