Wole Balogun, Ado Ekiti
Immediate past governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari is never sincere with workers on the N30,000 minimum wage for Nigerian workers, describing the setting up an advisory technical committee to handle the matter as diversionary and a plot to send the worker the wrong way.
He said the president became jittery when the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) vowed not to vote for him unless the N30,000 minimum wage was implemented and opted to deceive the workers with the Bismark Rewane-led committee.
According to a release issued on Wednesday by Fayose’s media aide, Lere Olayinka, the former governor asked what other function the committee would perform since he already promised to send a bill to the National Assembly to effect the change from N18,000 to N30,000 three months ago.
Fayose said: “It is on record that on November 6, 2018, while receiving the report of the Tripartite Committee on the Review of National Minimum Wage, President Buhari endorsed N30,000 as the new national minimum wage. He also promised to send a bill to the National Assembly to effect the change from N18,000 to N30,000.
“This is more than three months and the president is now setting up another committee purportedly to recommend modalities for the implementation of the new minimum wage. So what did the first committee that recommended the N30,000 minimum wage actually do?
“The President is simply playing on the intelligence of the workers by giving the impression that he is committed to the new minimum wage so as to get votes from them.
“The workers should, therefore ‘shine their eyes’ and avoid being deceived by a president who has failed in all ramifications and desperately seeking to hold on to power even at the expense of the suffering Nigerians.”
While insisting that the president lacked clue and cannot provide any solution to the problems of Nigeria, Governor Fayose said no amount of deceitful committee will sway the workers into re-electing a failed government to superintend over the country for another four years.