The Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress may hold a nationwide strike following President Bola Tinubu’s government’s failure to meet organised labour’s new minimum wage demand.

Speaking on Channels TV on Monday, NLC’s assistant general secretary, Chris Onyeka, said the union would only accept ₦250,000 it demanded at its meeting with the Tripartite Committee on Minimum Wage.

Mr Onyeka stated that labour made it clear that it will reject the ₦62,000 offered by the government and the ₦100,000 proposed by some individuals and economists for workers.

“We have never considered accepting ₦62,000 or any other wage that we know is below what we know is able to take Nigerian workers home. We will not negotiate a starvation wage,” Mr Onyeka stressed.

He also revealed that the union “never contemplated ₦100,000, let alone of ₦62,000. We are still at ₦250,000; that is where we are, and that is what we considered enough concession to the government and the other social partners in this particular situation.”

Stating that the one-week ultimatum it gave the government to meet the organised labour’s demand would expire on Tuesday, Mr Onyeka said, “We’re not just driven by frivolities but the realities of the marketplace; realities of things we buy every day: bag of rice, yam, garri, and all of that.”

He added, “Our demand is there for them (the government) to look at and send an executive bill to the National Assembly, and for the National Assembly to look at what we have demanded, the various facts of the law, and then come up with a National Minimum Act that meets our demands.

“If after tomorrow (Tuesday), we have not seen any tangible response from the government, the organs of the organised labour will meet to decide on what next.”

“It was clear what we said. We said we are relaxing a nationwide indefinite strike. It’s like putting a pause on it. So, if you put a pause on something and that organs that govern us as trade unions decide that we should remove that pause, it means that we go back to what was in existence before.”

The unions had reduced their minimum wage demand from ₦615,000 to ₦497,000 and then later to ₦494,000, while the FG increased its proposal from ₦48,000 to ₦54,000 to ₦57,000, and then to ₦60,000, which both unions rejected.