Nigeria’s Minimum-Wage Evolution: A Comprehensive Timeline Of Increases Since 1981

Nigeria’s Minimum-Wage Evolution: A Comprehensive Timeline Of Increases Since 1981

In January 2024, the federal government inaugurated a 37-member tripartite committee to review the National Minimum Wage.

After a series of meetings and deliberations, President Bola Tinubu on Thursday, July 18, approved N70,000 as the new minimum wage for Nigerian workers.

The history of wage reviews goes back as early as 1959 in Nigeria.

From 1981 to 2018, Nigeria’s minimum wage changed invariably.

In 2000, it was increased to N5,500.

In 2011, President Goodluck Jonathan signed a new National Minimum Wage into law. The then law increased the minimum wage from N7,500 to N18,000.

This law applies to public or private sector employers with a workforce of about 50 persons.

The government started the review of the National Wage in 2019.

The unions demanded N30,000 per month as the National Minimum wage, the Federal Government proposed N24,000, and state governors N20,000.

In January 2019, the National Council of State approved the sum of N 27,000.00 as the minimum wage, but the governor’s counteroffered the sum of N 22,500.00.

The NLC rejected the offer but later proposed the sum of N30,000.00 (Thirty Thousand Naira).

This amount was accepted by the federal government, leading to the enactment of the National Minimum Wage Act 2019 in March 2019.

Down memory lane, in 1979, when Shehu Shagari took over as a Democratic President, his government implemented a bump in the pay for politicians in public office. Unfortunately for the Shagari government, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) was set up a year earlier — 1978.

At the time, NLC asked for N300 per month as minimum wage. After the now-familiar battle with the federal government, the wage bill of 1981 was signed into law at a compromise of N150 ($245) per month.

After Shagari, Nigeria went into several military coups, where such demands for wage review were a lot more difficult.

When Abdulsalami Abubakar became the transition head of state in 1998, the minimum wage for federal workers had become N450, and his government announced a review in the minimum wage from N450 ($5) to N5,280 ($60).

When Olusegun Obasanjo came into power in 1999, many civil servants, by law, were earning just a little above the minimum wage of 1981.

In 2000, the government reviewed pay and passed a new wage bill to give workers N5,500 ($55) from the N250 ($2.5).

By 2010, at about the time Goodluck Jonathan became president, the national minimum wage had become about N7,500 ($50).

Jonathan’s government increased it to N18,000 in March 2011. This meant a 140% increase in salaries. This was fine for another five years till Muhammadu Buhari took office in 2015.

In 2016, the NLC made a formal request to review the wage from N18,000 to N56,000. Against what was requested, the Buhari government and the NLC settled for a review from N18,000 to N30,000 — a 66.67% increase.

In 2024, President Bola Tinubu approved a new wage of N70,000 for workers and pledged to review the national minimum wage law every three years.

The government had earlier proposed N60,000 and thereafter raised it to N62,000 while labour demanded N494,000 and later reviewed it downwards to N250,000.