Aji Tasks Minimum Wage Members to Work in National Interest
By Patience Ikpeme
The Chairman, tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage Alhaji Bukar Goni Aji urged members to uphold honesty, patriotism, respect, and great accommodation in the national interest.
Goni Aji, a former Head of Service of the Federation further urged Committee members to move away from emotional appeal and embrace rational appeal in the wake of too many competing demands from the citizenry.
A statement issued by Head of Press, National Salaries Incomes and Wages Commission, Emmanuel Njoku quoted him saying, “the build-up to today in undertaking this national assignment has been friendly, cordial, educative and informative which gives me a safe comfort that we shall run the remaining part of this national duty with a sense of responsibility and love of country”
“I will crave the indulgence of each one of us and solicit a robust discussion with a greater understanding of each other’s position and put forward an acceptable recommendation for a new National Minimum Wage” he noted.
Chairman of the Tripartite Committee urged the committee to focus their minds on doing the right thing even when such a decision is difficult and goes against our personal position.
“No matter how difficult the decisions are for everyone, there must be a decision. In this drive, the philosophy of country first and National Interest should be our guiding principle. We are all gathered here as leaders with massive and wide knowledge and experience on this matter and are representing the interests of our various constituencies in this assignment but today as far as all of us are concerned we only have one constituency which is Nigeria.” Alhaji Goni Aji said.
He said he was highly optimistic that the spirit of give and take earlier canvassed by Mr President will overpower the Committee for the sake of our people and country. “For this reason, we must muster the courage to take responsibility for our decisions based on available information, data, the state of the economy, our level of production, and the level of inflation so that our recommendations for a new National Minimum Wage will be fair, realistic, affordable, implementable, and sustainable”.
He enjoined members of the committee to go straight to the point of agreeing to a new minimum wage based on knowledge, facts, figures, and data available so that the assignment will be concluded in the next few days.
