The Federal Workers Forum made the disclosure in a letter dated September 2, demanding that the federal minimum wage be raised from N70,000 to N300,000, a more than fourfold increase from what workers currently earn under a wage approved only two years ago.
The group also proposed a maximum salary of N1.5 million for Level 17 officers, the highest grade in the federal civil service. Level 1 Step 1, the entry point, would start at N300,000 under the structure the forum laid out in its letter.
“Federal workers are dying in instalments,” the forum said in the letter, addressed to President Bola Tinubu, the National Assembly, and other top government officials. “We are suffering in silence; our salary is too poor; it is not taking us home.”
According to the forum, the N70,000 minimum wage signed into law in 2024 has not been fully implemented for federal workers. The consequential adjustments and associated allowances that were supposed to accompany the new wage have not been paid, the group confirmed.
Only N40,000 was added to workers’ salaries after the minimum wage moved from N30,000 to N70,000, the forum said. That figure sits at the center of the workers’ argument that the approved wage was never properly honored to begin with, leaving a significant implementation gap that the forum said has compounded the financial pressure on civil servants.
Rising food prices, transportation costs, accommodation, electricity bills, and the cost of cooking gas were cited by the forum as the conditions that have made the current wage unsustainable. The group did not provide specific price figures but described the combined effect as one that has pushed workers into debt and deprivation.
“Federal workers have suffered enough,” the forum said in the letter. “It has been three years of torture, torment, and agony for the federal workers since the removal of fuel subsidy.”
Beyond the base wage, the forum demanded payment of outstanding salaries and promotion arrears that it said remain unpaid. A 40 percent peculiar allowance was also among the demands the group laid out in the September 2 letter.
The forum, in the same letter, called for a permanent cost of living allowance and a family support allowance to be added to the salary structure. Improved health insurance and pension benefits were also part of the package the workers asked the government to approve.
No response from the presidency, the National Assembly, or any relevant government agency had been made public by the time this report was filed. The demands now sit before the three arms of government the forum addressed in its letter.
The N70,000 minimum wage was itself a subject of extended negotiation between the government and organized labor before it was approved in 2024. Implementation gaps had been reported across different tiers of government even before the Federal Workers Forum raised the current alarm.
Tuesday’s letter draws a direct line between the fuel subsidy removal in May 2023 and the deterioration of workers’ purchasing power. The forum said three years of price increases have eaten into wages that were already considered insufficient when the subsidy was withdrawn.
Digital loan apps, which charge high interest rates and have drawn scrutiny from financial regulators, have become a coping tool for some federal workers, the forum disclosed. The detail points to a debt burden that the salary structure, as it currently stands, is not designed to absorb. The forum’s mention of these platforms underscores how workers have been forced to seek relief outside formal financial channels simply to meet basic monthly obligations.
The Federal Workers Forum’s demand for an N300,000 minimum wage now joins a broader national conversation about wage adequacy, cost of living, and whether the current federal pay structure can sustain the workers it was built to serve.
