(Opinion) Much Ado About Kwara’s N70,000 Minimum Wage; By Abdul Abdul

If I had the opportunity to make a wish right now, it would be to ask Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq and his co-travellers in this voyage of self-hallucination a few questions. Questions like what exactly is the fuss about the newly approved minimum wage in Kwara? Is the incumbent Government the first to implement a new minimum wage – something the law mandates every five years? What exactly is the worth of the latest minimum wage considering the economic reality in the state? Could Governor Abdulrazaq have chosen not to implement the new wage? Chief among it all: Do these people ever wake up in the morning and go to bed at night without the thought of Saraki?

 

The last poser sincerely evokes some laughter. After reading articles authored by the Governor’s aides, I couldn’t but wonder what exactly the substance was in it. One would have expected the communicators to speak more on the modalities for arriving at N70,000, how germane this is to the multifaceted nuances of our current economic realities, how satisfactory it was for the workers, expatiate more on other plans to improve workers’ welfare, not forgetting to highlight the government strategy to capture the private sector, especially small and medium scale enterprises in their economic renaissance plan. All these were missing. Rather, in their primitive tradition, they immersed themselves in the pursuit of emptiness; an attack on Saraki. I couldn’t but wonder what the correlation was between Saraki and the new minimum wage in Kwara. I mean where is that connection? Was he the Negotiation Committee Chairman, the Labour leader, a Political Appointee on Labour Matters or what? Where exactly does he feature in all of these? While I leave you all to brood over that, let’s delve further into the minimum wage conundrum.

 

Let us take a cue from the words of Public Sector Turnaround expert, Dakuku Peterside that, “the issue of minimum wage or salary increase, or by whatever nomenclature it is articulated, is a complicated policy issue. The wage increase is neither good nor bad, but as a policy choice, it must be tied to some ultimate objective and benchmarked against the projected cost of living and inflationary trends over a given period.” If we are to go by this – except we shy away from the truth – the newly approved minimum wage by the Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq administration in Kwara State is a wage far from reality. This is not to demean the ruling government’s effort, but rather, profoundly assess the wage to their purchasing power. The Abdulrazaq administration cannot reasonably pride itself on the payment of N70,000 at this age and time when the Nigerian currency has been battered to its lowest and inflation is at a record high. We are living in a time when people crave a return to the good old days and not the present age. Not even Abdulrazaq – except for his personal gain – prefers 2024 to 2004.

 

As of 2003 when Saraki assumed office as Governor, Kwara State was in 33rd position out of the 36 states of the federation in revenue allocation. The state’s internally generated revenue was comatose, yet Saraki’s government lived up to expectations by paying the N7,500 minimum wage. As of 2011, when he completed his 8 years in office, the minimum wage in Kwara was N9,050. In fact, in April 2011, barely two months after the Senate passed the N18,000 minimum wage act and a month before he left office, Saraki had already set up the minimum wage review committee. The new wage came into effect that same year. It is important to state that during his years in office, the value of the naira to the dollar hovered around N120 to N151. The price of PMS, a key economic index in Nigeria, was N65, while the average inflation rate for 2011 was 10.9%. Within this period, he completely executed developmental projects and instituted a blueprint for the government, which spurred the turnaround in Kwara.

 

Today, there are no known economic indices that can show that the N70,000 to be paid by Arakunrin Abdulrazaq will accord the people an improved standard of living. I dare the Abdulrazaq tink-tank to dispute this. It is laughable that the Abdulrazaq government takes public delight in the consideration of N70,000 as suitable for our dear Kwara workers without putting into consideration, the disparity between the wages and the cost of living. The headline inflation rate in September 2024 was 32.70%, representing a rise of about 220% when likened to the annual rate in 2011. The food inflation figure stands at 37.77% – and is still rising – while as of the time of putting this together, the naira exchanges for a dollar at the rate of N1,758.

 

At the moment, a bag of rice costs more than N95,000, far beyond the minimum wage. During the administration of Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed, the state government implemented the N18,000 minimum wage in his consequential adjustment structure. At the said time, a bag of rice goes for around N9,000 in the market. This means a level 01 Officer could conveniently buy 2 bags of rice. But judging by Arakunrin Abdulrazaq’s table of deceit and impoverishment, officers within level 01 to level 09 in Kwara cannot afford a bag of rice per month. Worse still, the consequential adjustment makes it hogwash. Or how does it sound that a level 14 Officer who is close to being an Assistant Director in a ministry has just a paltry N26,000 left in his salary after purchasing a bag of rice?

 

To further school the rudderless government in power with simple arithmetic, at N65, the N7,500 minimum wage in 2003 will buy nothing less than 116 litres of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, while N9,000 will buy a little more than 138 litres. Let Arakunrin Abdulrazaq and his cohorts pick up a calculator to see how many litres of PMS his N70,000 can buy at the rate of N1,100 per litre. Hope we all know that the given rate is about the cheapest at any filling station today. Take a visit to the car parks at various ministries today. Many workers have sold the cars acquired from their savings or loan schemes executed during the good old days of the past administrations. For those who still own one, not many of them can afford to drive to work. To worsen the situation, the cost of transportation has also skyrocketed than ever before. A state worker who works around Kwara State Polytechnic and lives around GRA, in Ilorin, is better off unemployed, considering the transportation fare. Painfully, while other states are investing massively in the CNG alternative, Kwara, under Arakunrin Abdulrazaq, continues to pay lip service to it.

 

Governor Abdulrazaq, in his wisdom, has already sold to the people of Kwara a dummy, with all these embellished claims by his appointees. They all will do better as hype men. Before the 2019 elections, the Otoge campaigners that ushered in Abdulrazaq – many of whom have been pushed out of their party and government – collectively promised Kwarans that their wages would be equivalent to or above that of other neighbouring states. Today, what was approved is the least among states. The comedians in Government House, hilariously boastful that the Governor “set a new record as the fastest, and first-ever Kwara Governor to fully implement minimum wage twice in office,” ought to add the figure compared to other states so far.

 

Governor Abdulrazaq should answer to the sobriquet, ‘Maradona’, a moniker hitherto reserved for a former Military President. How could Abdulrazaq have “whined or complained” about implementing a new wage collectively approved by all government tiers and even the organized private sector? How can he ever complain at a time when the state allocation from the federal government has more than doubled under the present Bola Ahmad Tinubu administration following the removal of fuel subsidies? How can Governor Abdulrazaq complain after inheriting an IGR template, which was brilliantly conceived and incorporated by the immediate past administration in Kwara under Dr Abdulfatah Ahmed – one that has guaranteed a steady flow of income for the state?

 

Come to think of it, only the N18,000 minimum wage approved by the previous administration covered the pensioners. Under Arakunrin Abdulrazaq, neither the present N30,000 nor the newly approved N70,000 minimum wage captures the Pensioners. In the wake of this declaration, the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, Kwara chapter, alongside some other union bodies, have cried out, to lament the continued marginalization of the minimum wage under the government of Abdulrazaq.

 

With the present situation, the only way out for any thoughtful government is to think outside the box and come up with ideas that raise productivity and expand the state economy. Unfortunately, the Abdulrazaq administration has failed to optimize the state’s potential. Rather, it continues to embark on cosmetic and white elephant projects that have no bearing on the economic advancement of the state. While one can only sympathize with the Kwara labour force and citizens at large following the hardship in the state, the sycophants were yet insensitive enough to hail Arakunrin Abdulrazaq as the “hero of the 21st century in Kwara”. This is nothing but a vivid symptom of a psychosis-related disorder.

Abdulganiyu Abdulqadir – ABDUL ABDUL writes from Ilorin, Kwara State.