President of the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifo, stated that Organized Labour will not back down on its demand for N250,000 as the minimum wage for workers in Nigeria, emphasizing that this figure remains the ideal benchmark.

Osifo made this declaration at the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Women Commission's inaugural Annual Convention in Abuja. The theme of the convention was ‘The Dynamic Woman: Navigating Challenges in a Constantly Evolving World.’

He mentioned that the TUC and Nigeria Labour Congress are planning to meet with federal government officials to negotiate and reach an agreement on the minimum wage.

Negotiations between Organized Labour and the federal government reached an impasse when the government proposed N62,000 as the minimum wage for workers. The proposal was later given to President Bola Tinubu for consultation with stakeholders before being sent to the National Assembly.

Osifo, speaking at the convention, assured attendees that negotiations for the new minimum wage have not been abandoned. He explained that both labour and the government are currently fine-tuning the matter.


“The minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead. The 2019 minimum wage (that has expired) took about two years to see the light of day. We started the negotiations in 2017.

“We promised you when we started in January (this year) that we will ensure this one is fast–tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were in 2019 which took two years,” the TUC president stated.

He insisted that the minimum wage was receiving attention, adding that the President wanted further consultations before submitting it to the National Assembly.

“So where we are today, we submitted the divergent position in June, when we did that you know clearly that Mr President came out to say that he wanted to consult across board which is the governors, Local Government chairmen, organised private sector and labour, so we are doing some level of reach-out and conversations.

“So that what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor, so for the fact that in the media we are not shouting, we are doing some level of internal work so that this bill will be submitted in earnest soon. We still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as ideal minimum wage,” Osifo stated.