The Lagos state government is to pay N85,000 minimum wage to civil servants, higher than the Federal Government’s approved minimum wage of N70,000.
Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Lagos state Governor stated this in an interview on Channels Television on Wednesday where he talked about his government’s plans for the state and effort to address problems.
The Governor explained the increase in the state’s minimum wage beyond the federal government’s approved amount is a matter of affordability and capacity and in response to the significantly high cost of living in Lagos state.
He said, “You also mentioned about the minimum wage and what do I need to throw in for my people. I’m glad to announce that the minimum wage for Lagos which we have discussed with our unions is N85,000 today and it is not a competition. It is a function of affordability and capacity but we know too well that when people live in Lagos, it has a premium in terms of cost of living.”
“We increased our salary earlier in the year and would like to come in January and say I’ve been able to increase the minimum wage in Lagos to N100,000.”
Furthermore, the Governor spoke on the state’s plan for the transport sector with respect to rail transport. According to him, the state government plans to connect all five districts to rail transport.
The Governor also dismissed worries in some quarters over the rising debt profile of the state, saying that Lagos is still within the standard debt ratio.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, Lagos State recorded the highest domestic debt in Q1 2024 with N929. 41 billion, followed by Delta with N334.
However, Governor Sanwo-Olu on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Wednesday. said there is no need to fret as that of the metropolitan city is lower than the standard debt profile of 40 per cent
“The standard debt ratio that we are meant to meet standardly is about 40%, today we are less than 30, we are about 29 or 28% of those numbers, so we are not even close to it.”
Back in February, the governor had stated that the state had the capacity to endure a burden of N20 trillion indicating that this should be seen as an investment for the future.
“So the challenge around this N2 trillion is just a number. Indeed, the capacity of Lagos, we should be doing N20 trillion.
”In the last budget, when we pulled all of our numbers together, my people were saying to me that they wanted a budget of N6 trillion, but we could only do N2 trillion. That goes to show you the strength and capacity that the state has”. he said.
The governor also said that the state had grown its budget exponentially in the last five years when he came in as governor.
According to him, Lagos achieves 95 per cent budget performance every year, with this year’s budget already 90 per cent gone.
“If you see what our budget growth has been in the last five years when we came in, we inherited a budget of about N620 billion, today Lagos State is doing about N2.3 trillion.
“We are probably going to close this year’s budget at about N2.5 trillion. We have tripled the budget of this state and mind you, we year-on-year we are doing about %95 budget performance, this year alone we are well over 90%,” the governor said.ChannelsTV
