The Oyo State Government has approved a minimum wage of ₦80,000 for the State workforce.
Disclosing this in a statement on Wednesday, the State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Dotun Oyelade, said the Technical Committee set up by the State Government recommended and got approval from Governor Seyi Makinde for the implementation of the new salary scale.
He added that the new scale will be implemented as soon as the consequential adjustments process is completed by the committee comprising government and labour top officials.
Oyelade recalled that, only last month, the National Bureau of Statistics, in its latest employment statistics published for 2024, rated the state as the most worker-friendly in the whole of Southern Nigeria due to a significant decline in the state’s unemployment rate, following the high-pitched employment of workers into various sectors of the state.
“The Oyo State Government has been paying workers’ salaries on the 25th of every month since Governor Makinde took office in 2019.
“The governor began paying the previous ₦30,000 minimum wage from the start of his tenure over four years ago, including consistent payments of pensions, gratuities, and a 13th-month salary for both workers and pensioners alike.
“Since November 2023, Governor Makinde has been paying ₦25,000 to workers and ₦15,000 to pensioners as a welfare wage award. The Makinde administration introduced the wage award to cushion the effects of the Federal Government’s fuel subsidy removal and has remained consistent with these payments for over a year, even to this day,” Oyelade said.
The commissioner said Makinde has paid the backlog of gratuities from 2008 to 2015 for pensioners, with an increase in gratuity payments for those under both the Local Government Staff Pensions Board and those paid by the Ministry of Establishment and Training.
He added that the governor has also reinstated pensioners whose names were removed by the previous administration and continues to provide all pensioners with an annual Christmas/New Year chicken bonus.