Mr. Peter Obi, the Vice Presidential candidate of PDP has joined the debate on national minimum wage and submitted the need for states to determine what they pay their workers based on their realities.
“Minimum wage doesn’t have to be universal,” he said on Politics Today, a programme of ChannelsTV.
“I don’t believe that somebody in Lagos should earn the same thing as somebody who is in, maybe, Anambra State or somebody in Maiduguri.”
He, however, stressed that it was important to have a federal minimum wage which is the product of proper talks with labour.
If elected, Obi who is the running mate of Atiku Abubakar for the forthcoming Presidential election said: “We will sit down with labour to find a constructive and acceptable decision”.
His views on the matter are not new.
During his tenure as governor of Anambra State, he had expressed them.
“I argued that every state is not the same. I said every state is not the same; every state won’t pay the same,” he said.
What is ideal for him is that: “There has to be a federal minimum, then each state, working within this minimum, can decide where they should go. That is what is obtainable all over the world”.
