The Federal Government’s new 70,000 naira monthly transport allowance could cost 465.7 billion naira over six months, and one of Nigeria’s two main labor groups wants no part of it.
The Trade Union Congress rejected the deal Wednesday, barely a day after the government and the Nigeria Labour Congress signed it. TUC leaders call the allowance a temporary patch, not a raise.
What the deal says
The agreement was signed Tuesday in Abuja. It pays workers at all levels 70,000 naira a month, about $52, for six months starting in November. The government also promised to pay arrears of a peculiar allowance dating to May 1 in three equal installments, and to clear 19 months of unpaid allowances owed health workers within three months from December. A minimum wage committee is to be set up, and both sides will meet again in a month to check progress.
Some details are fuzzy. The memorandum gives no payment dates, and it is unclear how far the allowance reaches beyond federal workers. The 465.7 billion naira figure, or 77.6 billion naira a month, is a media estimate that assumes all 1,108,800 employees on the federal payroll system are covered.
Why the TUC says no
In a statement signed by President Festus Osifo and Secretary-General Nuhu Toro, the TUC said workers need a lasting pay increase. It argued that the government can raise salaries now without waiting for new minimum wage talks. Osifo said the union might have considered the offer if the money were folded into salaries. “We want something that is much more sustaining,” he said.
The union also said the government never fully honored a wage award agreed in October 2023 and has fallen short on a deal with health workers. It wants the lowest-paid federal worker earning 300,000 naira, up from the 70,000 naira minimum wage. The Nigeria Union of Pensioners complained that retirees were left out entirely. Atiku Abubakar, the African Democratic Congress candidate in the 2027 election, said the allowance would do little to ease the wider hardship.
The Ministry of Labour and Employment’s spokesperson, Annah Daniel, said payments would begin next month. President Bola Tinubu’s reforms have been credited with improving public finances but have left millions of Nigerians in what Reuters described as the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation. The government had not publicly answered the TUC in the reports reviewed.
The TUC said it was waiting for a planned meeting before deciding its next step. With the allowance ending in April 2027, the minimum wage talks now have a deadline of sorts.
