President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Act 2024 on 29 July 2024, raising the statutory floor from ₦30,000 to ₦70,000/month and shortening the mandatory review cycle from three years to three years (retained) with an explicit indexation clause tying future reviews to inflation. The Act was the culmination of the most contested wage negotiation in Fourth-Republic history.
The trigger was the 29 May 2023 removal of the petrol subsidy in Tinubu's inaugural address and the parallel float of the naira on 14 June 2023, which together pushed headline inflation from 22 per cent in May 2023 to 34.2 per cent by June 2024 and collapsed the real value of the ₦30,000 wage. The NLC under Joe Ajaero and TUC under Festus Osifo opened with a demand of ₦615,000/month in February 2024; the federal Tripartite Committee under Bukar Goni Aji offered ₦48,000; labour called a nationwide blackout strike on 3 June 2024 by ordering electricity-sector workers off the national grid, the first time the grid had been deliberately shut down as an industrial-action instrument. The strike was suspended after 48 hours on a presidential undertaking to negotiate in good faith.
The final settlement of ₦70,000, announced on 18 July 2024 and signed eleven days later, was barely above one-tenth of labour's opening demand but more than double the previous floor. State implementation has followed the historic pattern: Lagos, Rivers and the FCT paid within months; several northern and middle-belt states have negotiated phased payment; a number of state governors have publicly stated that they will not pay ₦70,000 and have proposed ₦60,000 or lower in defiance of federal law. The next statutory review is due in 2027.