The disagreement between Nigeria’s two central labour bodies deepened on Monday as the Trade Union Congress president, Festus Osifo, insisted that the Nigeria Labour Congress has no power to negotiate workers’ salaries and allowances without the TUC at the table.
Osifo spoke on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief as the row over the Federal Government’s N70,000 transport allowance spilt further into the open. He described the agreement, which the NLC reached with the government, as an aberration, arguing that one labour centre cannot bind the other to a deal it was never part of.
His main contention was that no rule gives a single union the right to negotiate for another. He challenged his NLC counterpart, Joe Ajaero, to point to any International Labour Organisation regulation that permits one centre to negotiate while the other is neither present nor consulted. The ILO framework, he noted, is tripartite, bringing together labour, government and employers, with both congresses expected to submit a joint list of members through the Ministry of Labour.
Osifo acknowledged that the NLC has the larger membership, with roughly 60 affiliates to the TUC’s 40. That size, he argued, does not confer the authority to speak for unions that already have their own umbrella body. As he put it, “You cannot negotiate for a body that has a trade union.”
He also questioned the process that produced the allowance. The meeting where it was agreed, he said, was not a sitting of the Joint Public Sector Negotiating Council, pointing out that the labour minister and Ajaero are not members of the council, which has its own quorum. He went further, faulting how the last minimum wage increase was passed into salaries, saying a flat N40,000 adjustment was applied across the board and left many federal workers poorly paid.
The quarrel traces back to late October, when the government approved a N70,000 monthly transport intervention for public servants across all levels. The payment is due to run for six months from November 2026 to April 2027, which works out to N420,000 for each eligible worker over the period. It followed a conciliation meeting with the NLC in Abuja and was captured in a memorandum of understanding, alongside the payment of peculiar allowance arrears dating to May.
The NLC has defended both the deal and its right to strike it. Ajaero faulted the TUC for rejecting an agreement it did not negotiate, stressing that the congress acted alone and that the TUC was free to pursue its own, higher demands with the government. He was blunt in response, saying, “You don’t kick against something you did not negotiate.”
For its part, the TUC has rejected the allowance as a temporary measure that does not touch the deeper problem, demanding a salary increase and a new minimum wage as high as N300,000 for the lowest paid worker. The current national minimum wage of N70,000, agreed in 2024, now matches the value of the one-off transport allowance, a sign of how far living costs have climbed since.
Beneath the exchange lies a contest over who seaks for Nigerian workers at a time of severe economic strain. Both leaders insist organised labour remains united on the goal of a living wage, even as they differ sharply on method and mandate. With fresh minimum wage talks now due to begin, the question of which body sits at the table, and on whose behalf, is unlikely to settle quietly.