BY ALO 360 Editorial Board
On Workers’ Day, President Bola Tinubu declared poverty and insecurity national emergencies. Labour leaders responded with a warning of a collapsing social contract. Between the two positions lies the truth Nigerians already know: workers in this part of the world are squarely and grossly underpaid.
Yet, the real measure of that crisis is not in speeches. It is in what work is worth.
There was a time, not too long ago, when a Nigerian worker could at least rely on the basic value of their wages. When the minimum wage stood at ₦18,000 under President Goodluck Jonathan, the naira exchanged at about ₦150 to the dollar. In simple terms, that worker earned roughly $120 a month.
Today, the minimum wage is ₦70,000. On paper, it appears like progress — nearly four times higher. But at an exchange rate of about ₦1,376 to the dollar, that same worker now earns roughly $40 monthly.
This is not progress. It is a collapse. In real terms, the Nigerian worker has lost about 66 percent of their earning value.
And that is before the realities of inflation and cost of living are considered.
Fuel now sells for over ₦1,400 per litre, depending on the area of purchase—no thanks to the US-Iran war. Transport fares have multiplied. Food prices have surged beyond reach. Rent has become a long-term burden rather than a yearly obligation. Electricity tariffs continue to rise without a corresponding supply.
What this means is simple: even that reduced $40 value does not hold. It evaporates faster than it arrives.
This is where the language of policy begins to sound detached from lived experience. While governments across the world have announced measures to cushion the effect of the rise in energy costs, the Nigerian president told its citizens, “I hear you from various angles of the economy. The fuel price is biting hard, but look around, let’s just thank God together that you are better off. Listen to them in Kenya, in other African countries, what they are going through.” To Tinubu, thanking God is a policy that will ameliorate the suffering of Nigerians.
PAPER ECONOMIC GROWTH
The government speaks of GDP growth, infrastructure expansion, and job creation, but reality speaks of hunger, survival, and erosion of dignity. The problem is not that reforms are happening. The problem is who they are working for.
An economy that grows while its workers sink is not growing in any meaningful sense. It is redistributing upward.
Labour leaders captured this contradiction when they described the system as “where workers create immense wealth yet receive only a fraction of it”. They pointed to a country where poverty now affects about 65 percent of the population (meaning 150 million), where thousands are pushed into poverty daily, and where growth figures exist without relief.
It is difficult to argue otherwise.
Because when wages lose value this sharply, the consequences are not just mere numbers or propaganda. They show up in how people live. A full-time worker now calculates survival on a daily basis — what to eat, what to skip, what to postpone. The idea of savings, stability, or upward mobility has become distant.
In today’s Nigeria, work has stopped being a pathway to dignity. It is now a mechanism for endurance.
With this year’s celebration anchored on decent work, there is nothing decent about labour that cannot sustain life.
And yet, the expectations placed on workers remain unchanged. They are asked to be patient, told reforms take time, and are encouraged to trust the process.
But patience is difficult to demand from people whose conditions are deteriorating in real time.
WRONG NATIONAL PRIORITIES
Even more troubling is the contrast in national priorities.
At a time when workers are struggling with wages that have lost most of their value, public spending continues to reflect a different set of concerns. In the 2026 budget, over ₦100 billion was allocated to electoral litigation alone — a figure that dwarfs the monthly earnings of millions of Nigerians.
It sends a message, whether intended or not: politics is urgent, workers are negotiable. And here lies the main challenge to dignified labour force.
Because when people feel that the system does not work for them, they stop believing in it. And when belief erodes, stability follows.
The warning from labour about a tipping point should not be dismissed as rhetoric. It is an observation grounded in lived experience.
No society can sustain a situation where those who drive its economy cannot afford to live within it.
No economy can claim success when its workers are growing poorer in real terms.
And no government can speak of decent work while wages fail the most basic test of dignity.
The Nigerian worker is not asking for excess. The demand is far simpler — that work should be enough.
Enough to eat, commute, and to live without constant anxiety about survival.
That is the minimum standard of any functioning system.
Until that standard is restored, every declaration of reform will sound incomplete. Every promise of improvement will feel distant. And every Workers’ Day will serve less as a celebration and more as a reminder of what has been lost.
Because the truth, stripped of all policy language, is this: Nigerian workers are earning more in numbers, but less in value — and living worse as a result.
