Progressives Governors Forum Director-General, Dr Salihu Lukman, has described the Nigeria Labour Congress nationwide protest over minimum wage as a needless exercise..
The NLC and other labour union on Wednesday staged a national protest to demand the withdrawal of a bill that seeks to remove the National Minimum Wage from the exclusive to the concurrent legislative list.
But in an interview with newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, Lukman said the organised labour was using outdated approach to press home its demand.
“We are not saying they should not protest, but this protest is needless. I can guarantee that it is not going to stop the process in the National Assembly. It is not also going to take away the issue.
“We need to work with them to develop this democracy and we can only do that if every constituent unit and citizens in those units can negotiate with the constituent governments and get results.
“As it is, we are all frustrated and that is what we should be addressing. This ‘we against them’ that labour is creating does not exist.
“We should be applying ourselves to resolving the problems of this democracy. There are fundamental problems bigger than we can imagine,” he said.
He argued that a system that imposes the same minimum wage regime on states irrespective of their revenue generation and capacity to pay was not sustainable.
He added that it was no longer possible for poor states like Yobe and Zamfara to pay the same wages as Lagos and Rivers.