Nigeria is a poor country & doesn’t have money……We only exaggerate our wealth—Bayo Onanuga, presidential spokesman

President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, has said Nigeria, the most populous African country, is “a very poor country.”

Onanuga said the resources of the country are only being exaggerated by the citizens, adding that the minimum wage of the Nigerian workers is far below to their counterparts.

“What is happening is that our country is a very very poor country. I will tell you why I said we are very poor country. I think we have a wrong impression of the wealth of our country. It is exaggerated,” Onanuga said.

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“This country for example, if we start from minimum wage, you will discover that if you compare our country with Kenya or South Africa. South African minimum wage is like $240 a month. In Nigeria, our N33,000 is just about $39. Look at the gap.”

“You can see that this reflected in other wages. Look at what the Chief Justice of South African earns, it’s about at the rate of dollar now, it must be about 20 or 30 times of what Nigeria’s Chief Justice earns. And it’s all over.”

This came from Onanuga after a few hours that the President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, said the minimum wage should be N1 million.

Ajaero said only N1 million minimum wage can address the worsening economic situation of Nigeria which largely affects workers.

He said, “This N1 million may be relevant if the value of the Naira continues to depreciate; if the inflation continues to depreciate. The demand for Labour is equally dependent on what is happening in society. You will remember that by the time we contemplated N200,000, the exchange rate was about N900. Today, the exchange rate is about N1,400 or even more.”