Federal Government May Adopt Selective Minimum Wage Increase – Osinbajo

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says the Federal Government may consider increasing workers’ remuneration package, especially bonuses of certain government agencies, instead of increasing wages across board. According to a transcript made available to journalists in Abuja on Tuesday by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, the Vice-President spoke during a session titled, ‘Conversation with the Vice-President’ at the 2017 Nigerian Bar Association National Conference held in Lagos on Monday.
Osinbajo said though the issue of better pay for workers was a good suggestion, the government was “in a bind of sorts.” He said at the moment, the government was spending 70 per cent of its revenues on remuneration and overheads, leaving less than 30 per cent for capital expenditure. Osinbajo said, “I think that what we are probably going to end up doing is what we have done with some of the parastatals; in other words, identifying certain government services that must be remunerated differently in order to increase efficiency. One of the revenue generating agencies, for instance, is the Federal Inland Revenue Service. Improving remuneration, especially bonuses, would do a lot of good. What we saw happen in Lagos with the Lagos Inland Revenue Service, was because there were bonuses, there was improvement in revenue and reform. People were able to do better, even in our judicial system. Because we paid better; we remunerated better, people were able to improve.”