Though the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC’s planned strike was averted, there are indications that disagreements abound over the new national minimum wage. While the tiff over the implementation of the Minimum Wage Act subsist, it seems inevitable that the issue of imbalance in fiscal pomes and responsibilities between the federal government and her sub-national units would equally come to the fore. It is not about N18, 000. It is all about the will to pay. Yet everyone knows that N18, 000 cannot pay a decent rent, cannot provide transportation to and from work in the cities of cannot pay anyone’s school fees and can barely feed a family of five. So the debate is about will to pay and not N18, 000 but to pay for the necessities: to feed the hungry, heal the sick, shelter the homeless open the arteries for the city and villages for the man of labour. If this is want the populace went, then we understand that the debate is not about N18, 000. The paper examines these debates in details. It also examines the greatest threats to new minimum wage of N18, 000 and identified the rate of inflation; and the inflation itself as the great menace of the cost of living. The paper equally identifies and highlights that the battle is a battle about class disparity between the poor and the rich, the absence of institutional refuge for the ordinary worker hankering for a step above rank misery. The paper concludes by positing that for the new minimum wage to have the desired impact of improving the purchasing power of the workers and half the galloping strike of poverty there must be massive government investment in infrastructure.

Though the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC’s planned strike was averted, there are indications that disagreements abound over the new national minimum wage. While the tiff over the implementation of the Minimum Wage Act subsist, it seems inevitable that the issue of imbalance in fiscal pomes and res...