‘N500/litre fuel or N500,000 minimum wage’ – Workers write Tinubu, make fresh demands

Civil servants under the aegis of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council, JNPSNC, Trade Union Side, have written to President Bola Tinubu, seeking an immediate intervention to tackle the worsening economic hardship facing workers.

In a letter addressed to the President, the workers urged the Federal Government to stabilise the price of petrol at N500 per litre, approve an immediate Wage Award and upwardly review salaries and allowances across the public service.

The workers equally demanded the immediate constitution of a committee to negotiate a new National Minimum Wage ahead of January 2027.

According to the workers, the recent increase in fuel prices to N1,430 per litre and above in some locations had further worsened the cost-of-living crisis.

They gave the Federal Government until Wednesday, September 30, 2026, to take action on their demands, warning that the prevailing hardship was creating palpable tension among workers and Nigerians.

The workers added that the removal of fuel subsidy three years ago had triggered an astronomical increase in fuel prices and produced multiplier effects on the prices of essential commodities across the economy.

According to the JNPSNC, the situation had made life increasingly unbearable for workers, adding that the provision of food palliatives was not a sustainable solution to the economic crisis.

“It has dawned on Nigerian workers that the provision of palliatives such as bags of rice, Indomie, vegetable oil, garri, among other edible foods, is as good as weaponising Nigerians with poverty because it is a Pyrrhic intervention which is unsustainable, inaccessible to the majority of Nigeria’s population and also limited to political cronies,” the workers said.

They further stressed that a more sustainable intervention would be to reduce the cost of fuel to N500 per litre, stating that the measure would have a multiplier effect across the economy.