FACT CHECK: Did Tinubu ‘steal’ Peter Obi’s idea on the hourly wages proposition for workers?
VERDICT: True
PLOT: On 7th June 2023, Tinubu announced that there’d be a restructuring in wages for workers in Nigeria where workers would earn on an hourly basis.
Nigerians, particularly Peter Obi’s supporters have called this a ‘steal’ or ‘hijack’ as the idea was not originally Tinubu’s, but their principal, Peter Obi, the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate who had made clear his stance on workers remuneration in his manifesto.
Reportera decided to investigate these claims to determine who actually was the first proponent of this idea by reviewing their election manifestos, which is a compendium of the policies they’d implement if sworn in.
We started with the LP candidate, Peter Obi. In his 72 page manifesto titled ‘Our Pact With Nigerians’, Obi promised to remove the current salary structure of the national minimum wage in which workers are being paid on a monthly basis and replace it with an “hourly productivity-based national minimum rate”.
The LP presidential candidate said private and public sector employers would pay their workers based on their actual productivity.
The manifesto promises to “resolve the national minimum wage problem by doing away with the extant salary structure and introducing an hourly productivity-based national minimum rate, by which public and private sector employers should pay employees based on their actual productivity”.
“We will drive the legislation to retain a National Minimum Wage with a binding effect and application across all the states and local governments of Nigeria,” it added.
“This shall include the criminalisation of non-payment of salaries, wages, pensions, entitlements, benefits, and violation of collective bargaining agreements.
“This will reduce poverty and inequality, and enhance social solidarity necessary for a development bargain.”
On the other hand, Tinubu’s policy document, an 80 page manifesto titled ‘Renewed Hope’ made no mention of the hourly wages structure. His manifesto covered a broad range of policies, however it didn’t mention a policy to restructure the wage bill to an hourly metric basis.
Peter Obi’s manifesto clearly defined it’s stance on wage structure by proposing a per hour payment structure whereas Tinubu didn’t directly or indirectly. We can ultimately conclude that this was Obi’s idea and not Tinubu’s.
