Of minimum wages and deflected maximum rage
The would-have been 3-day warning General Strike of the Nigeria Labour Congress in demanding an implementation of the new National Minimum Wage across board appears to have come and gone, ending as an anti-climax. Representatives of organised labour reached an agreement with those of the Federal Government led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation and former Senate President, Pius Anyim, after an earlier marathon session with the National Governors Forum. As I write this at dawn after a sleepless night of coordination with the Joint Action Forum Secretary, Comrade Arymson, the details of the agreement are just becoming clearer. Yet, as scores of activists and Nigerian workers across the country who through calls and text messages with which they have bombarded us and rightly so over the last couple of hours can see, a lot of questions rise from the aftermath of where we now are. These questions include, in my view, but as well go far beyond the particular matter of the c...