THE Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has demanded an immediate reversal of the fuel price hike by the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL)
The NLC, through its president, Joe Ajaero, said it appeared that President Bola Tinubu’s government did not know anything more than increasing petrol prices.
In a statement signed by Ajaero on Wednesday, October 9, the workers expressed dismay over the hike.
“Even following the logic of market forces, we find it an aberration that a private company (NNPCL) is the one fixing prices and projecting itself as a hegemonic monopoly.
“We challenge the government to go to the drawing board and present us with a blueprint for inclusive economic growth and national development instead of this spasmodic ad hocism and palliative policy.
“It needs no stating the fact that the latest wave of increase has grossly altered the calculations of Nigerians once again at a time they were reluctantly coming to terms with their new realities,” the group said.
The NLC pointed out that the hike would further deepen poverty and more jobs would be lost with multidimensional negative effects.
While calling on the government to ‘immediately’ reverse the hike, it noted that previous increases did not produce any good results, adding that people only got poorer.
“But more fundamentally, the government should be bold enough to tell Nigerians in advance the destination it wants to take the country.”
Meanwhile, Ajaero reportedly said protesting against the petrol price increase was beyond the NLC, challenging Nigerians to support the workers.
He stated this in Abuja earlier on Wednesday at the launch of a book titled, “The Tripartite: Understanding the Interplay between Workers, employers, and Government.
The book was authored by Sharon Ijasan.
Ajaero said, “Nigerians are expecting the labour movement to react to this hike. But the issue at stake is more than labour movement… What I think Nigerians should do is to mobilise and react as a collective.”
He decried the Nigerian government’s failure to revive the nation’s ailing refineries.
The ICIR reported that the NNPCL hiked the price of a litre of petrol to N998 in Lagos State and N1,003 in Abuja on Wednesday.
Many Nigerians saw the development as compounding the hardship they faced.
Until now, the NNPCL had sold the product for N855 in Lagos. The new development resulted from the anticipated total deregulation of the sector, which removes the NNPCL as the middleman and permits independent marketers to purchase the product directly from the Dangote Refinery.
Reports showed that fuel stations owned by independent marketers were also adjusting their prices beyond N1,000.
The spokesperson of the NNPCL, Olufemi Soneye, did not pick up calls and did not respond to text messages for comments when contacted by our reporter on Wednesday.
The state-owned oil company had, on September 4, hiked the pump price, which resulted in an adjustment by oil marketers to above N1,000, which made transportation costs jump by over 50 per cent or more.
Its executive vice president, downstream, Adedapo Segun, on September 5, said Nigerians should expect a potential hike in the pump price as the NNPCL moved towards a market-reflective price.
The ICIR reports that in the past, especially when the current senator representing Edo North and a former Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole, led the NLC, workers always opposed the government’s policies seen as unfavourable to the Nigerian masses.
They could protest for days while downing tools to compel the government to rescind its decision.
Oshiomhole-led NLC had repeated confrontations with the former President Olusegun Obasanjo who governed Nigeria while he was headed the NLC’s leadership.
The ICIR reports that such confrontations have been drastically minimal since the days of former President Muhammadu Buhari, with many Nigerians calling the labour union a “toothless bulldog”.
Marcus bears the light, and he beams it everywhere. He's a good governance and decent society advocate. He's The ICIR Reporter of the Year 2022 and has been the organisation's News Editor since September 2023. Contact him via email @ mfatunmole@icirnigeria.org