Trade union opposition to the government’s planned removal of petrol subsidy will be stepped up this week as two of Nigeria’s most powerful private and public sector unions prepare to deepen their alliance.
The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) said it has already begun to mobilise its members to resist the removal of subsidies.
National President of the association, Dr Tommy Okon, said in Abuja: “We are engaging in advocacy and enlightening our members to let them know that where this government is taking us to must be resisted. Why is the government still pumping money into the electricity sector it claimed to have deregulated and commercialised? As I sit here, my grandchildren are owing because this government has over-borrowed to the point that we do not even know what we borrowed again.
“Any attempt at removing petrol subsidy is akin to living on ‘fantasy island’. The government is suffering from what I will call ‘policy abortion’. In this case, the government is foot-dragging on the payment of N30,000 minimum wage; epileptic electricity supply, no pipe-borne water supply and no efficient public transportation are social drawbacks that are affecting the quality of life of Nigerians.
“Yes, it may be a matter of law since the PIA is now a reality, but laws must come with human face and sympathy. These things are not solely about legality but also about morality. Laws are made for man and not man for the law.
“Labour has the justification to go on strike of interest and strike of right. We can go on strike to force the hands of government on this matter if we are pushed to the wall,” he said.
Okon alleged that the removal of petrol subsidy is an attempt to mobilise resources for the 2023 elections and not about the wellbeing of the people.
THE Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had earlier insisted that workers and masses would not accept any further increase in the pump price of fuel in the name of subsidy removal, urging workers and the citizens to prepare for total war against the fuel price hike.
NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, in his New Year message to workers, also 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. NLC directed the affected states to commence indefinite strikes to force the respective state governments to implement the new wage.
In a nine-page statement, NLC said the government is still 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.
“Organised Labour has made its position clear on this matter. We have told the 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 governments. The truth is that the perennial increase by the government of the pump price of petrol is actually a transfer of government failure and inability to effectively govern to the satisfaction of 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 30 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 its own crude oil.”
ALSO, the People’s Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M), a coalition of individuals and organisations committed to the emergence and building of a mass workers party, and the Socialist Transformation of Nigeria, has rejected the recent hike in the price of gas and the impending hikes in the price of fuel and electricity tariff, among other things.
The coalition stated in a communiqué signed by Comrade Jaye Gaskia and Comrade Omotoye Olorode of the TRAP-M secretariat, that it would organise another Occupy Nigeria Protests on the 10th anniversary of the first one this January.
The NLC, late last year, also announced plans to embark on nationwide protests on January 27, 2022, to protest against moves by the Nigerian government to increase fuel prices.
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