* N70,000 minimum wage didn’t come to us unawares
By John Odunayo
Ekiti State Governor, Mr Biodun Oyebanji, on Tuesday assured workers in the state that all would be over the new minimum wage for workers.
Oyebanji told workers, “On minimum wage, once it becomes a law, when the President signs it into law, all will be well”.
The governor spoke in Ado Ekiti while presenting N1bn cheques for gratuities to some retirees.
He said, “The only thing I know, I am here to serve you. Let us wait, at the appropriate time, all will be well. One thing I know is that I am not going to disappoint you”.
The Senate and the House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the N70,000 National Wage Bill into law as forwarded to them by the President, Bola Tinubu, earlier the same day.
Earlier at the weekend, the state Commissioner for Finance, Akintunde Oyebode, had said that the new minimum wage stress would not be insurmountable to the state.
Oyebode said that now that a national minimum wage has been approved, “each state will reserve the right to negotiate with its labour unions on the consequential adjustments”.
Speaking on whether Ekiti State can pay the new minimum wage, the commissioner said, “This did not come to us by accident. The conversation has been going on for months. If you recall, we have already paid a wage award of N15,000 monthly, so, in reality, our minimum wage has been N45,000, not N30,000.
“We had already predicted N70,000 as the reasonable position. We have done our simulations on what it will now cost us to pay those wages. It will be a stress, but not insurmountable for us.
“We have already done the simulations, we will negotiate on the consequential adjustment with labour and of course as you can tell, we are in a much better place than when we were owing workers several months’ salaries years ago.
“The Governor Biodun Oyebanji administration has been prudent, we have been fiscally responsible and all we have been doing for the past months was in preparation for this. There are certain things that we could have done that we chose not to do because we expected that wages will increase and we have to respond to that,” the commissioner said.
