The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, has said that N70,000 will make sense if all the agreements the union reached with the federal government are implemented.
He said that the union and other stakeholders considered vital issues facing Nigerians and the private sector before they arrived at the amount.
Ajaero, who stated this during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today, explained that the organised labour agreed with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that N70,000 was the best was to save Nigerians from further hardship.
He said, “At the last week’s meeting, the president brought the proposal that he would give us N250,000 if we would allow him to increase the pump price of the petroleum product. And we said no. We equally looked at it that within five years we will still have another negotiation. That time we need to equally move high based on the situation at the moment.
“There are equally other incentives, but those are promissory notes, but we need to follow them up. There are other stakeholders, the organized private sector, the SMEs, etc, who are under pressure for us. The ease of doing business is another thing. The energy cost also matters.
“All these came into consideration. Those were the issues that came up today (Thursday). If all the things we agreed upon are implemented, you will discover that the N70,000 may have value. There was a time when the minimum wage was N125 and it made sense.”