Why Kano needs over N10bn monthly to pay new minimum wage

Kano state’s government has revealed that it will require over N10billion monthly to pay its workers’ new minimum wages.

“We have promised to pay N30,600, that is even above the Federal government N30,000 but as you know, Kano has the highest civil servants in Nigeria,” the state’s head of civil service, Kabiru Shehu said while speaking with journalists in his office on Tuesday.

“We are paying monthly salary of N9.6 billion with the new wages, we need extra N500 million, that means we need over N10billion monthly to pay the wage bill per month.”

The state’s government has consented to implement the new wages assigned by the federal government with an additional margin of N600.

Shehu, however, said with the additional differential percentage expected on new wages, the state’s monthly wages will rise by over N500 million.

He posited that before now, the government pays over N9.6 billion on salaries and pensions monthly.

Although the head of service was not specific when the implementation will take effect in Kano, he stressed that a technical committee has been set up to work out the considerable percentage, put in cognizance; the financial strength of government.

“We are currently engaging the labour unions on the possibility of percentage workable for the government,” Shehu said.

“The federal government has instructed its agencies to pay but the directive was not on the state government. ”

He said the payment advice given to the state can only be determined by the financial strength of its government.

“We have approximately 180,000 workforces, that is huge,” Shehu said.

“We have primary school teachers, that is SUBEB, local government workers, academic staff, and other in the public sector.”

On whether the government has the financial muscle to pay N10billion monthly to servicing recurrent expenditure, Shehu contended that the government will certainly redouble efforts to improve on its internally generated revenue to meet the financial commitment.

“I would say it will not be difficult or challenging but if the government can sustain payment of salaries over the years without problem, I believe government will be able to strike balance,” Shehu said

“Already, government has constituted committee to look into the state IGR and I believe that will be given more priority. Although, the new minimum wage is not captured in 2019 but government can always make provision for supplementary budget to pay workers.”