Minimum Wage Committee Meeting Deadlocked as Court Declines to Grant Fresh Order Stopping Labour Strike

Pat Stevens/

The meeting of the tripartite committee set up to come up with a new national minimum wage has reportedly ended in a stalemate.

Also the National Industrial Court of Nigeria earlier today rejected a request for a fresh order stopping the organised labour from embarking on its planned indefinite strike scheduled to commence tomorrow.

The Chairman of the tripartite committee, Ama Pepple, told journalists that the meeting would be reconvening at 10pm.

She disclosed that the committee arrived at two figures of N24,000 and N30,000 as the new national minimum wage.

She said the committee also hoped to get a feedback from the labour leaders on the appeal to them to call off the strike when the meeting reconvened later tonight.

The court presided over by Justice Sanusi Kado also refused to grant a prayer for an order to compel the government to immediately commence the process of adopting N30,000 as the new national minimum wage.

Justice Kado said it would be unnecessary to make another order stopping labour from embarking on the planned strike having earlier made a similar one in a case brought to the court by the Federal Government last Friday.

The fresh ex parte application seeking to stop labour from embarking on the strike and to also compel government to commence the process of paying the N30,000 minimum wage was filed by a civil society group, Kingdom Human Rights Foundation International.

The group’s lawyer, Mr. Okere Nnamdi, informed the court that he had filed his client’s ex parte motion alongside other processes on November 1.

He urged the court to grant the prayers, including the one seeking an order of substituted service of the court processes on the governors joined as the 10th to the 45th defendants in the suit.

The judge immediately reminded him of the Friday’s order made by the same court, but he insisted that his ex parte motion was different from that of the Federal Government, save for the prayer seeking an order stopping the planned strike, which is contained in both applications

He said two prayers contained in his motion seeking an order of substituted service of the court processes filed in the case on the 36 state governors and the one seeking an order compelling the federal and state governments to commence the process of paying the N30,000 minimum wage differentiated his motion from that of the Federal Government.

Responding, Justice Kado said an order of interim injunction could only be granted if there was an urgency, there was the need to preserve the subject matter of the dispute and the defendants could not be served.

The judge noted that the court having, on Friday, granted an order stopping the strike, it was no longer any form of urgency in the matter, and as such, it was not necessary to compel the government to start the process of adopting the N30,000 as the new national minimum wage.

Following the judge’s explanation, the plaintiff’s lawyer applied to withdraw two of the prayers having to do with the request for an order stopping the planned strike and the other seeking to compel the government to pay N30,000.

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