Introduction
THE TOPIC of this discussion can be divided into two broad segments. The first is the issue of how inflation (defined later) affects workers’ wages and standards of living. The second segment is largely an industrial relations affair especially as it has to do with how wages are determined and the ways in which government (the ultimate regulator of industrial relations matters) on one hand, and the labour movement (“organised” and non-organised), on the other, intervene or may intervene on matters of wages and standards of living of working people (including the unemployed, the self-employed and pensioners).
Perhaps a convenient place to begin is that the dynamics of the wages of workers always had to do with both production and production relations at broad and general levels across the world and with the general class struggles in societies. In countries like Nigeria that experienced colonial and neo-colonial phases of exploitation and especially since the definitive debut of the IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1980s, the consequences of economic and social policies have been pivotal for the characteristics of wage regimes, employment and the overall living standards of Nigeria’s working people. Needless to add, the said economic and social policies are formulated and implemented by the government: government of the ruling class.
But at a more serious level, it will be obvious that a large segment of Nigeria’s working people are legally excluded from benefiting from the provisions of the New Minimum Wage Act (NMWA). What fraction of Nigerian workers are working for organisations that employ more than 25 workers? Imagine how many workers are on part-time or piece-job employment? How many workers will qualify for transport allowance on the condition stipulated by the 2024 MWA? These are the same sort of conditions that subvert the right of workers to unionise.
The interventions of labour in the foregoing circumstances are necessarily within laws/rules, and regulations formulated and implemented by government – ruling class government and generally supportive, as we shall exemplify below, of ruling class interests. This is the correct working-class way to see labour laws, minimum wage law, rights of workers to unionise, and judicial procedures relating to labour, employment, industrial disputes, workers’ wages etc. The current siege on PENGASSAN and NUPENG, The unending intimidation of medical doctors (NMA and NARD), the retrenchment of 800 Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) workers, the unending face-off of employers with JOHESU, the unending FGN-ASUU “re-negotiation” since 2009, underscore the unending anti-worker siege under ruling class labour laws and procedures since the 1978 Labour Act!
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But we must also pay appropriate, critical and honest attention to how the Nigeria Labour Movement, especially the “organised labour” segment (also known as the Labour Centers) have responded or failed to respond particularly at the level of education (necessarily labour movement culture and ideology) and organising.
The foregoing are the issues around which this presentation revolves, and arising from which our discussion needs to fashion both an appropriate perspective of the circumstances of the labour movement and an appropriate strategy for galvanising the movement for the rescue of the movement and, necessarily, the rescue of the Nigeria.
What is inflation?
Inflation is the continuous rise in general price level of goods and services over time, which decreases the purchasing power of money. It is measured by a price index such as Consumer Price Index (CPI) based on 80,000 price quotes in the USA; and about 10,000 price quotes in Nigeria from thousands of outlets in all the 36 states and the FCT.
According to Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics, “Nigeria’s annual inflation rate fell further to 16.05% in October 2025, the softest since March 2022, from 18.02% in the prior month. This marked the seventeenth consecutive month of slowing price growth. Food inflation, the largest component of the inflation basket, recorded another sharp decline to 13.12% from 16.87% in September, helped by the on-going harvest and a stronger currency. The Core Inflation Rate which strips out the volatile prices of agricultural produce and energy, slowed for the fourth month to 19.5% in September. On a monthly basis, the CPI rise by 0.9% in October, after increasing 0.7% in the prior month.” [Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria]
AI Overview of the Current Status of Inflation and its Impact on Consumers in Nigeria
Nigeria’s headline inflation rate in August 2024, was 32.15%, a decrease from 33.15% in July but still significantly higher than the rate in August 2023. Recent inflation is attributed to policy changes in 2023 that led to devaluation of the Naira and removal of energy subsidies.
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Regarding its impact on consumers, AI Overview observed two major impacts of inflation. To start with, inflation results in reduced savings. Secondly, AI overview observed especially the impact on fixed-income earners–pensioners.
As for potential solutions to the problems of inflation, AI suggests common ones such as CBN maintaining high interest rate as monetary policy and formulation and implementation of tighter fiscal policies (taxes, etc.).
Other strategies for controlling inflation according to AI overview include investment in infrastructure to reduce cost of production and cost of living and improved financial sector regulation. These are all standard free-market “solutions”.
National Minimum Wage and the National Minimum Wage (Ammendment) Act 2024.
The National Minimum Wage (Ammendment) Act, 2024 mandates employers to pay “eligible employees” a N70,000 minimum wage per month as from 19th July 2024. Exemptions from the Minimum Wage Law includes establishments with fewer than 25 employees; part-time employees–workers employed for less than 40 hours a week; commission-based or piece-rate work; and seasonal employees and crew members.The Minimum Wage Act also mandates employers to pay transport allowance to workers working 16 km from where they live.
Let us also link the issue of private accumulation and profit with level of workers’ wages and other related matters. As “Labour Creates Wealth” (this is the motto of Nigeria Labour Congress) it is a crucial cost of production. This is why capitalists, the so-called investors and their collaborators in government, insist on paying what many times amount to slave wages. Actually as, Late Comrade Professor Eskor Toyo used to insist, “a worker under capitalism is the modern equivalent of a slave”!
Almost immediately after the Minimum wage of N70,000 per month became law in July 2024, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) declared December 1, 2024 deadline for its implementation. Today, one full year after, various states continue to give excuses for not paying.
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But at a more serious level, it will be obvious that a large segment of Nigeria’s working people are legally excluded from benefiting from the provisions of the New Minimum Wage Act (NMWA). What fraction of Nigerian workers are working for organisations that employ more than 25 workers? Imagine how many workers are on part-time or piece-job employment? How many workers will qualify for transport allowance on the condition stipulated by the 2024 MWA? These are the same sort of conditions that subvert the right of workers to unionise.
What determines the prices of goods?
Inflation, as we observed, has to do with the rise in price of goods and services over a period of time.
Economists generally will say prices of goods and services are determined by the laws of supply and demand. But we know that the matter is more complex than that. We know for example that if there is only one or a few suppliers, (i.e in a situation of monopoly or oligopoly of supply, arbitrary prices are possible especially if the goods have no substitute, or consumers cannot force a price reduction through boycotts, protests, etc. We also know that governments may directly, or through regulatory agencies or authorities control price; or mediate prices through subsidies. We must also add here that labour is, or may be treated as, a commodity. For example when government policies or overall public policies generate unemployment, working people are forced to part with their labour power cheaply by offering low wages.
Beyond the power of supply and demand, the prices of goods and services are determined by cast of production (i.e cost of inputs such as labour, machinery, land, capital (borrowed-money, etc)
Politics, Economics and Resources in a Country
Economics basically has to do with available resources in a polity and how the resources are allocated towards satisfaction of the members of society.
The allocation of available resources in society and the purpose for which the resources are exploited and deployed, including how and how much, is a political matter throughout history (from “primitive” communal societies, feudal economies, to capitalist economies and social-welfare and socialist economies).
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In all these, production and social relations are determined by constant interactions, including fundamental clashes of social and class forces. To the foregoing event, it is clear that it is the class that controls political power, often manifested as state power (exercised by “government”) which determines how resources (including natural resources) are exploited and deployed, and who gets what, how much, and when!
From the foregoing, in societies where those who control economic power are also the same as control political power (state power or government power as in Nigeria especially since the debut of SAP in January 1984), laws that govern employment, wages and overall ownerships of means of production, where production is entirely for private accumulation – for profit, rather than for overall public purpose and where public purpose is served only incidentally or simply to enlarge the scope of profit as in what they call philanthropy or corporate social responsibility, are also reflections of ruling class interests and power.
Let us also link the issue of private accumulation and profit with level of workers’ wages and other related matters. As “Labour Creates Wealth” (this is the motto of Nigeria Labour Congress) it is a crucial cost of production. This is why capitalists, the so-called investors and their collaborators in government, insist on paying what many times amount to slave wages. Actually as, Late Comrade Professor Eskor Toyo used to insist, “a worker under capitalism is the modern equivalent of a slave”!
What determines what workers and other people buy with wages or exchange for money?
In exchange for work done or any service rendered, money is used in most modern societies. Where money is not used, needs are procured by batter and services are paid for “in kind”.
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Money, including wages and incomes generally, is used to procure various levels of needs or wants. Workers in Nigeria today use portions of their incomes to source food, housing transport, healthcare, education for the children. Those members of society who earn higher wages or other forms of income (profit, salaries and emoluments, commissions, etc.) tend to procure more expensive categories of needs, wants and services: they build or buy their own houses, buy land, buy vehicles, etc!
In 1965, the then President of the Republic of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah wrote the classic, Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism (International Publishers, New York). Nkrumah showed clearly, in the book, that in post-colonial African countries, the exploiting forces from former colonial powers like Britain, France, Germany, and their diaspora (United States, Australia, Canada) and satellites (Israel, South Africa) sustain their powers of exploitation after colonies became independent (as Nigeria did in 1960), but the ex-colonial powers keep the power of exploitation without any responsibility.
We can then say that whether a category of wage or income will be used to procure basic needs, as opposed to wants and luxuries will depend on the size of income. In societies where economic and social policies generate socio-economic inequalities and huge income gaps, the inequalities and gaps also determine what is produced and in what quantities. This is so to the extent, as we already established, it is profit that propels production under capitalism, and to the extent that investment and production is directed to the most profitable production projects, not necessarily what the masses actually need. Consequently, more resources are directed to the production of beer, wine and soft drinks, than water; hotel and motel services rather than affordable working class accommodation; large-scale poultry or maize production for export rather than consumption in Nigeria; investment in labour saving technology rather than employment of workers (ICT inbanking, use of robotics in manufacture, etc.)
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Also, under capitalism, basic services like education, power and electricity, health care, communication, public awareness and information services, transport services, security services, drinking water, environmental sanitation, communication and housing are supplied largely by profit-seeking organizations. This had been the direction of ruling class economic and social policy of privatisation (“free market policy”) in Nigeria especially since 1978. Working people (including unemployed and self-employed) had to pay for all these needs from their income or lack of it (wages, etc.). They have to pay for available (affordable) quality of these services or they are simply excluded because their wages (incomes) cannot accommodate the service! Under capitalist policies as in Nigeria today, varieties of caricatures of some of these basic social services which are actually supposed to be public-purpose projects (especially education, health care delivery, environmental sanitation, security, housing) are instituted or withdrawn as the ruling classes deem convenient and the depending on the balances of class forces arising from the struggles of exploited classes and their allies.
This is the pattern also in the “advanced” capitalist countries like USA, UK, and so many parts of Europe!
What is the connection of Euro-American [Imperialist] Global Capitalist Accumulation to Ruling class Economic Policies (Inflation, Wages, Social Services) in Nigeria today?
In 1965, the then President of the Republic of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah wrote the classic, Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism (International Publishers, New York). Nkrumah showed clearly, in the book, that in post-colonial African countries, the exploiting forces from former colonial powers like Britain, France, Germany, and their diaspora (United States, Australia, Canada) and satellites (Israel, South Africa) sustain their powers of exploitation after colonies became independent (as Nigeria did in 1960), but the ex-colonial powers keep the power of exploitation without any responsibility. Through their military power and international financial and corporate institutions (IMF, World Bank, and multinational corporations) and through their agents (the ruling classes of ex-colonies), the former colonial powers continue to formulate and implement political and economic policies that impose economic programs which enslave the masses of the working people in countries like Nigeria—workers, farmers, traders, etc.
The foregoing had been what the SAPs had been enforcing more definitively and more systematically through the overlapping ruling class regimes in Nigeria, as an example since the late 1970s. Concretely, all the economic policies derive from the so-called Washington Consensus of the World Bank and the IMF. In the main, the elements of that “concensus” include privatisation, reduction of the size of the public sector, devaluation national currencies, institutionalisation of indebtedness as economic policy, removal of subsidies, “cost-recovery” on social services (education, health care delivery, housing, public export promotion transport, and liberalisation of trade “reducing problems of doing business”–tax waivers, free-trade zones, enactment of labour laws that attack trade union activities, etc., etc.
Considered separately or put together, all the foregoing create dependence, kill local industries, intensify unemployment, drive down wages and intensify inflation.
The Public-purpose Alternative (Socialism) to the “Two-Vultures” Economic and Social Policy: Working Class Ideology of Socialist Transformation and Struggle Against Imperialism
To the post-colonial ordeal that Nigerian people, like many previously colonised people, face today, there had always been a working-class and “independence” ideology which our people have been struggling for since colonial days. This working class ideology is the collectivist, democratic control of the commanding heights of production, distribution and exchange.
This organisation and allocation of production and the means of production, democratically conceived and planned (Socialism), was what the Nigerian people decided in 1986 when the military dictatorship was forced to organise what they called the nationwide Political Debate and published in the J.S Cookey’s Political Bureau Report of that year. In another nationwide government-sponsored public discussion called The IMF Debate in that same 1986, Nigeria’s working people and the Students’ Movement expressed a resounding “No” to the question as to whether our country should take the IMF Loan that Babangida’s military regime was negotiating. This rejection of the IMF Loan and the popular “Yes” to Socialism must remind us that our movement, Nigeria’s Labour Movement, was clear about working peoples’ interest and the constant subversion of that interest by imperialism and the Nigerian ruling class.
That the military wing of the Nigerian ruling class in spite of the clear verdict of the Nigerian people against capitalism and IMF control of our country imposed both on Nigeria, is now history; and that’s where we have been since the early 1980s!
The Intervention Point(s) of the Labour Movement
We have tried to show in the foregoing segments of this discussion that the issue of inflation and wages in various economies in the world and in Nigeria are reflections of the politics of class interests and the history and dynamics of class power across nations.
What is left to be shown is that the interventions of the labouring people and the effectiveness of those interventions have varied in time and space inside national boundaries and across international boundaries. More importantly, the effectiveness of the intervention of the labour movement had been dependent especially upon the class commitment of the leadership of the movement. It is commitment that enabled the deployment of the power of organised labour beyond the boundaries allowed by ruling-class labour laws and practices.
It may be at least apparent from this presentation, the “legal” status of Nigeria’s organised labour had been prescribed largely by Nigeria’s Trade Union Act of 1978 and its amendment of 2005.
The basic law governing Nigeria’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) and all other trade unions in the country is the Trade Unions (Amendment) ACT 2005 was a pivotal change that allowed for the formation and registration of multiple central labour organisations, such as the TUC ending the previous monopoly of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC). [Google: accessed November 6, 2025].
The TU (Ammendment) Act 2005 sustained the existing, at that time, the definition and purpose of a trade union as: “any combination of workers or employers whose primary purpose is to regulate the terms and conditions of employment”. The Act stipulates that: “All trade unions must be registered with the Registrar of Trade Unions to operate legally. An application for a workers’ union must be signed by at least fifty members”. [My emphasis].
We must keep paying appropriate and full working-class attention to the nuances and unexpressed social class intendments of the definitions and the processes around the TU Act of 2005. We already did at some point earlier in this presentation.
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Beyond routine industrial relations engagements and processes, the Nigerian labour movement, via organised labour, [had] first, challenged ruling class power regarding the overall legitimacy of its policies and, secondly, having regard to amelioration of the effects of ruling class policies via regular industrial relations processes (collective bargaining process) largely at industrial union levels or, in the case of public sector unions, in constellations like Joint Negotiation Councils (JNCs), etc. The history (in the last forty-five years or so) and intensities or relative contributions of the above two responses may be divided into two fairly distinct periods regarding the modes of intervention by organised labour, i.e., 1978-1988, and 1988-2025.
Having gone through the details of the events of the past and their effects on the present, we are persuaded that our agenda for tomorrow are evident from the deterioration of the conditions of Nigeria’s working-class which is being constantly entrenched by imperialism and its Nigerian agents. Two elements of the agenda for tomorrow are evident.
Having regard to the foregoing, especially between 1984 and 1988, organised labour engaged directly in raising political, class, and ideological questions; and mounted opposition around issues like privatisation, retrenchment, civil liberties, governance, IMF and World Bank Loans and conditionalities (such as removal of subsidies, minimum wage, wage freeze, etc.) Also in that period, organised labour (which was then basically the NLC) engaged in massive organising for solidarity among trade unions, university teachers (ASUU) and the students’ movement (National Association of Nigerian Students–NANS). This was the source of the synergy that enabled various episodes of mass action against SAP in the second half of the 1980s and the mass protests against the 1986 Police killing of ABU students in Zaria.
The subsequent and subsisting mode and quality of response of organised labour (1988 to the present) represented a major shift in the direction, as we said above, of ideological collaboration with ruling class neoliberal commitment (surrender to privatisation even of pension administration, market forces myths, “deregulation” of wages, and social-service provision etc.) Even in the labour centers, contest for leadership focused on whether leadership should come from the private-sector unions or public-sector unions!
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Along with these debilitating tendencies and/or as consequences of the tendencies the solidarity and structural/functional coherence and solidarity in the labour movement have suffered very massive reversals especially in the last twenty years.
Conclusions and What is to be done
This presentation has shown how the Nigeria labour movement had responded to the escalating siege mounted by Nigeria’s ruling class and their enablers at global level. We have also shown that the Nigerian labour movement has a history of robust resistance pivoted on solidarity in the movement and ideological clarity about the strategic goal of working class struggle–working class political power!
Labour’s Agenda for Tomorrow
Having gone through the details of the events of the past and their effects on the present, we are persuaded that our agenda for tomorrow are evident from the deterioration of the conditions of Nigeria’s working-class which is being constantly entrenched by imperialism and its Nigerian agents. Two elements of the agenda for tomorrow are evident.
First, we must reinstate working-class ideology through practical struggle to defend working-class interests. We must take back many of the organisational and material advantages which the working class have lost in the last forty years. We must renew our commitments to working class ideology of socialism i.e. state-led, nationalist and self-reliant planned economic development. The achievements of the labour movement in the past, including the resounding and robust interventions of the organised labour in the 1970s and 1980s, during the IMF Loan and Political debates of 1985/1986, were all powered by working-class ideology.
As a general foundation for canvassing Nigerian Labour Movement’s agenda for tomorrow, I recommend the following Seven-point “manifesto” for adoption, necessary enrichment and expansion towards an immediate, nation-wide and mass-based campaign. This manifesto was formulated originally as part of my invited lead paper at the NLC@40 celebrations in Abuja in 2018. My lead paper to the March 9, 2022 TUC Political Round Table in Abuja was also informed by the proposals canvassed hereunder.
The second, element of the agenda for tomorrow is the question of organization. There are two legs to this question of organization.
Firstly, the trade union movement must get out of the mode in which the state councils of organised labour are so isolated from the national headquarters and from one another. In relation to this problem, the complete collapses of our efforts of the early 1980s towards establishing virile Local Government Chapters of the labour movement and the labour centres have shown how far backward our movement had gone! I have constantly complained about these degeneracies since 2010 or so!
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The second leg of the organisation element of the agenda is the continuing urgency of a political platform of the labour movement. The task of the platform will be to give political and ideological support to the labour movement and the trade union movement. While the goal of the political platform may include electoral politics, its most important function today is not necessarily about electoral politics. The immediate goal is to take Nigeria back from imperialists and their local agents and, in doing so, intensify and deepen class-consciousness and solidarity among the working class across the length and breadth of Nigeria.
All the foregoing Agenda for tomorrow are best pursued simultaneously. A real test of whether the Nigeria Labour movement will be able to reinstate the Labour movement’s heritage of the mid-1980s will be whether the movement can, and will spearhead the implementation of the Agenda for tomorrow outlined above.
A Basic Manifesto for the Nigeria Labour Movement Agenda for Tomorrow
As a general foundation for canvassing Nigerian Labour Movement’s agenda for tomorrow, I recommend the following Seven-point “manifesto” for adoption, necessary enrichment and expansion towards an immediate, nation-wide and mass-based campaign. This manifesto was formulated originally as part of my invited lead paper at the NLC@40 celebrations in Abuja in 2018. My lead paper to the March 9, 2022 TUC Political Round Table in Abuja was also informed by the proposals canvassed hereunder.
Nigerian Working Class Manifesto for true Independence of Nigeria: Seven-Point Agenda for National Unity, Economic Restructuring and Social Justice.
- We must wage a new patriotic struggle for political and economic independence of Nigeria from the two vultures. Nigeria’s working people must take their country back by declaring that the masses, not a few rich and their foreign masters, own Nigeria.
- Our movement must insist that to wipe out poverty, inequality, illiteracy, violence and crimes, Nigeria’s economy needs planning and with market mechanisms controlled by the interests of the masses of Nigeria’s working people.
- We insist that to enable planning, maximise use of our human and material resources and stop wastes, public ownership and control of the commanding heights of the economy in production, distribution and exchange had become necessary; education, health, water supply, housing and environmental protection must also be principally in the public sector.
- All the IMF – and World Bank-inspired policies of reduction of the public sector, devaluation of the naira, unending debt slavery, liberalisation of trade, removal of subsidies, sale and privatisation of public assets, etc. must be reversed immediately. Education, public health and agriculture must receive public subsidies as a priority.
- We insist that corruption is the product of the ideology of capitalist accumulation of private-sector-led economies. We see Chief Executives in handcuffs in USA and other capitalist countries almost every day; that has not reduced corruption there. Corruption will not disappear because a few scape-goats are disgraced or imprisoned! Capitalism produces and reproduces corruption because the rich also fund the ruling-class political parties! There are always members of the ruling circles that cannot be punished.
- We insist that only socialist economic planning arising from pubic control of the economy can cure an economy of the disease of periodic changes from “prosperity” to “recessions”; there is no Policy Document cure for this disease under the so-called “market-forces” economies!
- All of Nigeria’s public assets that were looted through what they call privatisation, concessioning, PPP, etc. must be taken back from the looters.
This piece a slightly edited version of a keynote address by Emeritus Prof Olorode at the 1st Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the Oyo State Council of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Ibadan on 9th December 2025. It is originally entitled: “The Impact of Inflation on Workers’ Wages and Living Standards in Nigeria: The Intervention Point of Labour Movement and Government.”
