OpeOluwani Akintayo
Lagos — The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has rejected the planned petroleum price increase to N340 per litre.
Ayuba Wabba, the NLC president, in a statement entitled “Nigerian workers refuse to take the bait’’, said the contemplation by the government to increase the price of petrol by more than 200 per cent was a perfect recipe for an aggravated pile of hyper-inflation and astronomical increase in the price of goods and services.
According to him, “this will open a wide door to social consequences such as degeneration of the current insecurity crises”.
Mele Kya, the Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, had announced that petrol could cost as much as N340 from February 2022.
The NNPC boss said the price increase would be consequent on the plans by the Federal Government to remove subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, popularly known as petrol.
Wabba described as “comical“ the bait by the government to pay N5,000 to 40 million Nigerians as palliative, to cushion the effect of astronomical increase in the price of petrol.
He said the amount involved in the “queer initiative“ was far more than the money government claimed to spend currently on fuel subsidy.
Mr Wabba noted that the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, restated the plan to increase the price of petrol on Tuesday at the launch of the World Bank’s Nigeria Development Update, NDU.
He said the disclosures by NNPC GMD and the minister were in symphony with the positions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, IMF, which urged the Federal Government to do away with fuel subsidy.
“The response of the NLC is that what we are hearing is the conversation of the Federal Government with neo-liberal international monetary institutions.
“The conversation between the government and the people of Nigeria, especially workers under the auspices of the trade union movement on the matter of fuel subsidy, was adjourned sine die so many months ago,” Wabba stated.
He continued: “Given the nationwide panic that has trailed the disclosure of the monologue within the corridors of government and foreign interests, the NLC wishes to maintain its rejection of deregulation based on import-driven model.
“We wish to reiterate our persuasion that the only benefit of deregulation based on import-driven model is that Nigerian consumers will infinitely continue to pay high prices for refined petroleum products.
“This situation will definitely be compounded by the astronomical devaluation of the naira which currently goes for N560 to one U.S. dollar in the parallel market.”.
The NLC president said any attempt to compare the price of petrol in Nigeria to other countries would be set on a faulty premise as it would be akin to comparing apples and mangoes.
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