Following a recent spike in the price of premium motor spirit, retirees in the South West on Thursday rejected the N70,000 minimum wage that President Bola Tinubu had just signed into law.
In a press release issued following their zonal meeting in Ado Ekiti, the state capital of Ekiti, the pensioners, acting on behalf of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, Southwest Zone, urged labour to reaffirm its demand for a minimum salary of N250,000, citing the current state of the economy.
Dr. Olusegun Abatan, the publicity secretary for NUP Southwest, made this known to journalists and made the demand that the payment of salaries to local government employees and retired primary school teachers, as well as the pensions of council pensioners, should not be disrupted by the implementation of local government autonomy.
“We found out that before the N70,000 was even implemented, the Federal Government has gone ahead to further increase the price of petrol, and we concluded that the two labour centres that went into that negotiation went there blindfolded and naïve.
“The Federal Government took advantage of the naivety and inexperience of Comrade Joe Ajaero, and Festus Usifo, by tricking them into accepting N70,000 and that it would not increase fuel price, but no sooner they agreed to kowtow what was said about N70,000, the Federal Government went ahead to increase fuel price.
“To that extent, the Southwest is rejecting the N70,000 minimum wage that Labour has negotiated and advised that Labour should go back to the negotiating table and insist on the N250,000 they initially wanted.
“Before you know it, the N2,000 that the Federal Government said it was going to increase the fuel price to will eventually emerge. Labour should go back. The value of the N70,000 is just about 60 litres of fuel.
“Labour should go back to negotiate N250,000 minimum wage. They have our backing on whatever is involved even strike to achieve a realistic minimum wage,” the pensioners said.
They applauded the zone’s governors for changing their views on pensions and gratuities for elderly persons by working on various initiatives in the individual states.
But Abatan, who claimed that only Ondo State had increased pensions for its retirees by 33%, filed an appeal, saying, “We want our state governments in the remaining Southwest states to implement the same consequential adjustment and 33% pension increase that was done for workers in 2019.”
“If these 33 per cent increases and consequential adjustments are not implemented before the new minimum pension or minimum wage, all pensioners in the country would be shortchanged. So, we appeal to our governors to do the needful.”
The system being put up at the federal and state levels should not interfere with payments of the pensions of retired primary school teachers and pensioners at the local government level, according to Abatan, who stated that the pensioners backed local government autonomy.
