The study investigates the impact of Nigeria’s government wage review
policy of 1998 on the differential in pay for public and private sector
workers of the same educational qualifications and ages. Empirical
analysis based on Mincerian human capital model is carried out for only
urban male employees (as they constitute a homogeneous group) in the
public and private sectors. The results obtained show that before the
wage review of 1998, public sector workers suffered a pay disadvantage
of 6.78 percent while about one year after, public sector workers enjoyed
a premium of 35.07 percent. In the absence of any wage reduction in the
private sector, this result suggests that the implementation of the 1998
wage review succeeded in making public sector workers to be better
remunerated than their private sector counterparts and it can be
concluded that the wage increase in the public sector achieved its
disguised goal of redressing the age-long poor pay in the sector.