A bricklayer in Ado Ekiti who earns ₦5,000 a day recently told me something that no labour communiqué from Abuja can defend.
According to him, “Oga, before, if I work for one week, I can buy one bag of cement. Now, I work for three weeks, I cannot buy one bag. So, which salary are they increasing?”
Indeed, that single question summarises the crisis that the labour movement has refused to confront. For many years, the Nigerian worker has watched his income rise on paper while his life falls in reality. Food has become expensive. Transport has become punishing. Rent has become suffocating. Yet, the only answer labour leaders offer is a new minimum wage figure, celebrated with photographs and press conferences, but forgotten at the market.
Ordinarily, one would expect a labour movement to fight the forces that make life expensive. In Nigeria, however, the reverse is the case. Labour leaders have developed a convenient formula. Whenever hardship deepens, they threaten a strike, demand a pay rise, and return with a figure. Government pretends to resist, labour pretends to be militant, and at the end, both sides claim victory. Meanwhile, the worker who was supposed to be rescued discovers that the new salary cannot buy more than the old one did.
In practical terms, the arithmetic is simple. A worker on ₦70,000 buys a bag of rice, a few measures of beans and garri, a litre of palm oil and a crate of eggs, pays for transport for the month, and the salary is already gone. Rent, school fees, electricity, medicine and clothing have not even been mentioned. Evidently, this is not a failure of budgeting. Rather, it is a failure of a system that has made everything costly while pretending that salary alone can fix it.
More worryingly, the majority of Nigerian workers will never benefit from any wage increase at all. Traders in the market, okada riders, tailors, mechanics, carpenters, hairdressers, farmers and vulcanisers, who form the bulk of the working population, are outside the formal salary structure. Therefore, any minimum wage is, at best, a relief for a minority. Labour leaders know this, yet they continue to speak as if a wage review for civil servants is a victory for all workers. That claim is not only inaccurate. It is equally misleading.
Furthermore, there are questions labour leaders have deliberately refused to ask. For instance, why should a bag of cement, produced from Nigerian limestone by Nigerian factories with installed capacity far above national demand, cost ₦15,000 in many markets and far more in some locations? How can a country that produces more cement than it consumes have one of the highest cement prices in Africa? Why should the same cement be cheaper across the border?
In addition, why has land become a luxury? A plot of land in the outskirts of our cities, which used to be affordable for a diligent worker, now costs millions of naira. Sharp sand, granite, iron rods, roofing sheets and tiles have all tripled. Beyond that, the cost of legalising ownership has become another form of punishment. The Certificate of Occupancy, survey, building plan approval, development levy and other charges imposed by state and local governments are now so high that in many states, the cost of perfecting title is almost equal to the cost of the land itself. Consequently, a worker who manages to buy land cannot afford to build, and a worker who cannot build cannot escape rent. As a result, a room self-contained is now presented as a privilege rather than a basic need.
Surprisingly, labour has said little about this. Apart from occasional statements, it has not organised any sustained campaign against cement producers, land speculators or the agencies that collect arbitrary fees. In other words, it has not demanded transparent pricing, competition enforcement or a capped, time bound process for land titling. Instead, it has chosen a safer path. Obviously, it is easier to demand a salary increase from government than to confront manufacturers and land administrators who are believed to be within the corridor of power.
This selective militancy reveals a deeper problem. Salary negotiations are visible and rewarding for leaders. They attract media coverage, political relevance and a seat at the table. On the contrary, fighting for cheaper food, cheaper transport, affordable housing, stable electricity, functional schools and equipped hospitals is difficult, slow and often confronts powerful interests. Predictably, labour leaders have preferred the visible struggle to the useful one.
In the meantime, the value of the naira itself has been ignored. No salary can be meaningful when the currency that carries it is weak. As long as the naira continues to fall, the price of fuel, spare parts, medicines, school materials and building fittings will continue to rise. In essence, workers therefore need more than a new figure. They need a currency that can hold value.
Similarly, the question of refining has been left largely unaddressed. It remains an embarrassment that Nigeria, a major oil producer, exports crude and imports refined petrol at exorbitant cost. That single failure fuels transport costs, which in turn fuel food costs and general inflation. Naturally, labour should have made local refining, through functional public refineries and transparent support for private refining, a central demand long before now. Without affordable fuel, no wage increase can survive.
A retired civil servant in Enugu captured the entire picture in one statement. He said, “Many of us serve for thirty five years and retire at sixty or sixty five. A man who gives his whole life to this country should be able to build a house and buy a motorcycle, and a motorcycle now costs about ₦2.3 million. Instead, many of us live worse after retirement. There is no good healthcare. Programmes for workers exist only on paper. Those who lead us close their eyes to our comfort because they have a hidden agenda. They romance government for their own benefit.”
Frankly, that testimony requires no further explanation. Even more troubling is what happens after service. In many states, a worker who retires after thirty five years of faithful service waits months, sometimes two to three years, before his gratuity is paid. His pension, when it comes, is irregular. Yet, during that same waiting period, he must still pay rent, buy food, pay for electricity, and purchase medicine at inflated prices. The cost of a common blood pressure drug has doubled in one year, while his pension has remained the same. In effect, the system punishes the worker both while he is active and after he has retired. Curiously, labour leaders who are quick to declare solidarity have said little about the routine delay and underpayment of pensions and gratuities across the federation.
Going forward, what should workers genuinely demand? To begin with, they should demand a deliberate policy to strengthen the naira through fiscal discipline, export growth and reduced waste.
In addition to that, they should demand that refineries be built, revived and made to work transparently so that fuel becomes affordable.
More importantly, they should demand a direct attack on the cost of living, including support for farmers, storage facilities, rural roads, market regulation and affordable public transport.
Moreover, they should demand that building materials, especially cement, be made affordable through competition enforcement and, where necessary, price regulation. Above all, they should demand affordable land, with a clear, capped and time bound fee for C of O and building approvals, alongside mass social housing.
Finally, and most crucially, they should demand functional public schools, equipped hospitals, potable water and stable electricity, a regular and timely pension system, and a living wage that is tied to the real cost of living.
As 2027 approaches, workers must also be politically alert. Labour leaders are already positioning themselves as kingmakers and promising to punish anti labour politicians. However, workers should judge all candidates, including labour backed ones, by a simple test. Does the candidate have a plan to strengthen the naira, make refineries work, bring down food prices, make land and housing affordable, reduce C of O costs, regulate cement and building materials, clear pension and gratuity arrears, and fix schools and hospitals? If the answer is no, and the only promise is a higher minimum wage, then that promise is not a plan. Rather, it is a distraction.
Ultimately, the Nigerian worker does not need a leader who can negotiate a figure in Abuja. Instead, he needs a leader who can reduce the price of existence at home. Until labour returns to that original purpose, every new minimum wage will be celebrated today and regretted tomorrow, while those who claim to speak for workers continue to speak mostly for themselves.
Fẹ́mi Akínṣọlá is a public analyst and development writer.
