By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), is planning to embark on an indefinite strike over further increase in pump price.
President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Ayuba Wabba, in a New Year message to workers, said the government is not relenting in its determination to push through further increases in the pump price of petrol and which as usual had been dubbed as “removal of petrol subsidy”.
The statement reads, “ Well, Organized Labour has made its position clear on this matter. We have told government in very clear terms that Nigerians have suffered enough and will not endure more punishment by way of further petrol and electricity price increases.
“Our position in this regard is predicated on four major grounds. First is our concern on the deceit and duplicity associated with the politics of “petrol price increase” by successive Nigerian governments.
“The truth is that the perennial increase by government of the pump price of petrol is actually a transfer of government failure and inability to effectively govern to the poor masses of our country.
“We are talking of the failure of government to manage Nigeria’s four oil refineries and inability to build new ones more than thirty years after the last petrochemical refinery in Port Harcourt was commissioned; the failure to rein in smuggling; and the failure to determine empirically the quantity of petrol consumed in Nigeria. The shame takes a gory dimension with the fact that Nigeria is the only OPEC country that cannot refine her own crude oil.
“During the negotiations that trailed the last increase in petroleum prices, Organized Labour made a cardinal demand on government which is that it must take immediate steps to revamp and rehabilitate Nigeria’s refineries.
“A Technical Committee was set up to monitor progress in this regard. As we all know, the work of the Technical Committee like our abandoned public refineries has ground to a halt and further negotiations with government adjourned sine die for nearly one year now. As a responsible social partner, we have at different times called on government to show us what they are doing in response to our demands but silence is the response we get.
“All we hear from government are half-hearted media pronouncements on efforts to allocate funds for the rehabilitation of our public refineries. On ground, there is no commensurate action. Between 2012 and now, about $9.5 billion has been spent on Turn Around Maintenance (TAM), Greenfield Refinery Projects and even public investments in private refineries. The tragedy is that despite these humungous investments of public funds, government continues to present the crisis of mass importation of refined petroleum products into Nigeria and the consequent import-based pricing regime of refined petroleum products as a fait accompli.
“This neo-colonial narrative in Nigeria petroleum sub-sector is what the Nigerian working-class family has rejected as unfathomable and unacceptable as it is antithetical to the notions of sovereignty and self-actualization and a mockery of the sacrifice of our heroes past.
“Even in the classic example of capitalism, there is something called the theory of comparative advantage where a country deploys its strategic assets to secure the highest possible positive outcomes for its citizens. Unfortunately, successive governments in Nigeria have failed to take strategic advantage of our natural endowment in oil and gas especially our prime position as the highest producer of crude oil in Africa to expand our economy, induce economic growth and engender sustainable national development.
“Today, instead of referring to crude oil as the blessing that it is, we now commonly describe this gift of God to Nigeria as “Resource Curse”.
“The quagmire of the Dutch Disease or Resource Curse in our country is most exemplified in our downstream petroleum sub-sector. The despair of our unfortunate Catch 22 situation is that government increases the pump price of petroleum products when the price of crude oil increases and falls in the international commodities market.
“The explanation is that such increases automatically translate to increases in the price of refined petroleum products. When the price of crude oil falls, the excuse is that the enormous pressure on the value of the Nigerian Naira occasioned by drop in forex revenue exacerbates the crisis of Naira devaluation and causes hike in petrol price.
“Even to the blind, the solution is clear – Nigeria must regain her capacity to locally refine petroleum products. There is no escaping the fact that our public refineries must be made to work. There is no short cut to the reality that we must replace the exploitative and subservient policy of Import-Based Price Regime with Local Production Based Price Regime for refined petroleum products.
“There is no explaining away through disingenuous Power Point presentations, procured rallies and over-rehashed publicity in the media the simple fact that as a major Oil Producing country in the world and after nearly seventy years of oil exploration in Nigeria, our country cannot deliver on efficient and effective public petroleum refineries.
“Nothing dents the image of Nigeria and presents us as a country incapable of providing governance as the failed narratives in our downstream petroleum sub-sector.”
Also, NLC named Zamfara, Taraba, Benue, Kogi, Cross Rivers, Abia and Imo states as seven states yet to implement the N30,000 minimum wage that took effect on April 18, 2019.
