The Tripartite Committee on Minimum Wage will reconvene on Tuesday, May 23 to further negotiate a reasonable new minimum wage for workers, after the organised labour walked out of the negotiation on May 15.

An invitation letter sent to the labour leaders by the chairman of the committee, Bukar Goni, states that the other members of the committee have agreed to shift grounds from the N48,000 proposal which was made on Wednesday.

The letter appealed to the labour leaders to speak to their members and attend the reconvened meeting next Tuesday.

The organised labour comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) have proposed a new minimum wage of N615,000, which is way higher than the N48,000 proposal by the government.

The organised private sector, on the other hand, proposed an initial offer of N54,000. After dumping the talks, the labour leaders addressed a press conference where they expressed their anger over the Federal Government’s offer.

They blamed the government and the private sector for the breakdown in negotiation.

The Federal Government had failed to present a nationally acceptable minimum wage to Nigerians before the May 1 Labour Day.

The situation has forced labour to be at loggerheads with the government. In the wake of the tussle, the NLC President Joe Ajaero insisted on the N615,000 minimum wage, arguing that the amount was arrived at after an analysis of the economic situation worsened by the hike in the cost of living and the needs of an average Nigerian family of six.

Ajaero and labour leaders have given the Federal Government a May 31 deadline to meet their demands.

On January 30, Vice President Kashim Shettima inaugurated the 37-member  tripartite committee to come up with a new minimum wage.

With its membership cutting across federal, and state governments, the private sector, and organised labour, the panel is to recommend a new national minimum wage for the country.

During the committee’s inauguration, the Vice President urged the members to “speedily” arrive at a resolution and submit their reports early.

“This timely submission is crucial to ensure the emergence of a new minimum wage,” Shettima said.

The 37-man committee is chaired by the former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Goni Aji.

President Bola Tinubu has approved the appointments of at least 555 persons to serve as Pro-chancellors/Chairmen and members of Governing Boards of 111 federal universities, polytechnics and Colleges of Education.

This followed Tinubu’s assent to a list of nominees selected by the Ministry of Education.

It was signed by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Didi Esther Walson-Jack.

“The inauguration and retreat for the Governing Councils will take place on Thursday, May 30 and Friday, May 31, 2024, at the National Universities Commission, 26 Aguiyi Ironsi Street, Maitama, Abuja. Both events will commence at 9:00am daily,” said Walson-Jack.

When contacted for confirmation, the Presidency said the list emanated from the Ministry of Education.

“This is from the Federal Ministry of Education…they make the nominations and forward them to the President to sign. But they are at liberty to release it from their end,” the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, told our correspondent on Saturday.

Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, on Friday in Osogbo declared that the fortune of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party in Osun State had nosedived in the state with the gale of defection that hit its rank.

Oyetola, the immediate past governor of the state, spoke at a rally organised to receive PDP ex-National Deputy Chairman, Alhaji Shuaib Oyedokun and ex-governorship aspirant on the platform of PDP, Mr Dotun Babayemi and their supporters into APC.

The ex-Osun State governor, who expressed confidence in the party winning the state in the next governorship election, said the defection into the party by Babayemi and his people was an indication that more people from the ruling party would join APC from the PDP before 2026 gubernatorial poll.

He further said, “It is an irony that we lost an election over a year ago and there has been no major defection from the party. What we have is the reverse. It is the ruling party that is coming to us, which shows that APC remains a party to beat. We have done so well, and people are starting to see that when it comes to governance, the progressive knows how to.

“The way President Tinubu has been governing us, that is what the APC governors in their respective states have been doing. I am delighted by the fact that we are not just getting anybody, but people of substance. Like Baba Suaibu, he is a veteran member of the PDP, decamping to the APC. It shows that PDP doesn’t exist any longer here.

“I am confident that in 2026, we are going to take over the state. This is just the beginning because several people are willing to come back to us, and a lot of political heavyweights are coming to join us. I welcome Dotun Babayemi and Alhaji Suiabu Oyedokun to the progressives,” he said.

Also speaking at the event, Babayemi who said good governance had ceased in Osun after Oyetola exited office, added that the present governor, Ademola Adeleke, lacked understanding of how to run a government.

He “The last time we witnessed good governance was in 2022 when Oyetola left government and it is time we unite to send the present administration out of government house for the sake of the state’s development.”

Reacting in a statement, Osun PDP chairman, Sunday Bisi, described Babayemi and others defection into APC as “a drama by the opposition APC to shore up its bad fortunes in Osun State.”

The party urged Osun people not to lose sleep over the “formal realignment of some political traders, whose round-tripping business of feeding fat on the common patrimony of the state was decisively halted through the July 16, 2022, governorship election.”

“The PDP believe the inglorious antecedents of the disillusioned dramatis personae involved in the soap opera of self-pleasuring are in public court. Such individuals like Mr Dotun Babayemi and his ilk have since been put in their place long before now and have ceased to be members of our party right before the 2022 governorship election,” it stated.