Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, has said the current N30,000 minimum wage is inadequate to cater to the average Nigerian worker.
Mr Abubakar, who was the candidate of the opposition People’s Democratic Party PDP, made the remark in a message to Nigerian workers to commemorate the 2023 International Workers Day on May 1st.
While encouraging the workers to stay optimistic, Mr Abubakar observed that the hyperinflation in all sectors of the nation’s economy under the current administration has constituted serious socio-economic strangulation for the Nigerian worker.
“In Nigeria of today, the minimum wage of N30,000 cannot buy a full bag of rice, let alone cloth or pay for a worker’s many utility bills.
“Hyperinflation in all sectors of our nation has constituted serious socio-economic strangulation to the average Nigerian worker, who’s now poorer than in 2015 when APC came to power,” he said.
Mr Abubakar advised workers to see the 2023 Worker’s Day as a moment for “sober reflection and stock-taking given the myriad of socio-economic tribulations facing them in the last eight years.”
He added that the lives and welfare of workers and their families have been reduced to the “abyss of mere existence due to the litany of policy errors by the ruling APC government, which created insecurity in all facets of workers’ lives — food, shelter, health, wealth and education.”
