Again, the conciliatory meeting between Federal Government and leaders of Organised Labour on Monday was deadlock.
However the parties agreed to reconvene by 1pm on Tuesday, 8th January, 2019 to resolve some grey areas.
In his remarks, Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment who spoke after the end of the meeting, explained that the Tripartite Committee’s recommendations will also be transmitted to the Federal Executive Council (FEC), National Economic Council (NEC) and Council of State which comprises of former Presidents and Head of States for final ratification, and subsequently sent to the National Assembly for enactment into law.
The National Assembly members who embarked on Christmas and New Year recess are expected to resume on Wednesday, 16th January, 2019.
“We have made progress and tomorrow (Tuesday), we will know the definite date when the bill will be transmitted to the National Assembly.
“It has been difficult to arrive at a date because there are processes to follow on the bill.
“We have to go to the Federal Executive Council with a council memo on the bill. After that, we will go to the National Economic Council and the Council of State.
“We can control the Federal Executive Council date, the same with NEC, but for the National Council of State, the President has to look at his own time-table and we inform past Heads of State and Justice of the Federation.
“This can take two weeks but we are trying to see if we can accommodate all these meetings by next week because we cannot do Council of State meeting again this week. Immediately after that meeting (Council of State), we will transmit,” the Minister assured the labour leaders.
On his part, Ayuba Wabba, NLC President affirmed that the meeting was deadlock.
He said: “We have had some useful discussion and we have consulted but we agreed to meet by 1pm tomorrow to see if we can finish the processes.
“The protest is about implementation so it has no link. What we are trying to do is how to see the bill transmitted to the National Assembly.
“The protest is about how to get all parties committed to the issue of minimum wage, it is different from how we get this bill transmitted with timeline to the National Assembly.”
Sequel to the breakdown of negotiation between the parties, Nigerian workers are proceeding with the planned nationwide protest scheduled to commence by 7am today.
KEHINDE AKINTOLA, Abuja
