A Former SDP Presidential Candidate, Adewole Adebayo has alleged that an increase in minimum wage to N615,000 will inflate the price of a bag of rice from N50,000 to N1 million. He argued that increasing wages without addressing underlying issues such as access to affordable housing, healthcare, and education would ultimately fail to improve workers’ overall well-being....CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE
He advocated for a paradigm shift towards a system where individuals are guaranteed access to basic necessities such as decent housing, healthcare, and education at minimal cost. By adopting such a model, he believed that individuals would be less reliant on wage increases to maintain their standard of living, as their fundamental needs would already be met through socialized investment.
He said in an interview with Arise TV, ‘”Where I fault Labour is in abandoning this social investment and they are kind of joining the government argument about the affordability of the minimum wage. If the NLC and TUC had their way, there would be no budget. And if you give all that money to a driver or a typist as a minimum wage, they will not be able to still afford the same rent now.
The bag of rice will go from N50,000 to N1M, then we are still back to square one. What is happening is that your wage will be growing maybe aesthetically but your cost will be going geometrically. Because when you pour more money into the environment, it doesn’t change anything. What we need to do is to socialize our investment. It won’t matter what my salary is if I’m guaranteed that I can have decent housing, I can have access to health care, and my children can attend public schools, and become doctors and engineers at minimum cost. And I can travel around the world at less than 3% of my salary, it doesn’t matter what you pay me.