The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said it would halt economic activities following the Federal government’s plan to increase fuel pump price to N340.
Recall that the Federal government recently announced its position to remove subsidies on petroleum products from next year because the burden of the subsidy was heavy to bear.
The NLC President, Comrade Ayuba Wabbapeaking, who spoke at the opening ceremony of the 17th NLC Harmattan School in Ilorin, Kwara State, said that labour would resist the government’s plan to increase fuel prices.
He explained that without the adequate arrangements to cushion the effect of the intended increase, the hike’s impact would affect every Nigerian, rubbishing the minimum wage.
“The concept of accepting deregulation hook line and sinker anchored on import driven price model is not something that we can accept. We have said that without mincing words.
“If you say we are pushing through our throat to accept deregulation on the basis of importation, basically there will be no end to price increase even the issue of saying that once you deregulate without having the capacity to refine for domestic use will bring down the price of PMS, is not correct.
“When the price of crude oil was almost at a zero level, the price of two items that were deregulated never came down; that is diesel and the price of kerosene. In fact, they kept going up. The market fundamentals, marketers, are out there to make maximum profit. Usually, they will collide, and that is what will happen to Nigeria if we accept that policy hook line and sinker.
“The implication is not also on the working class because whether we like it or not, the minimum wage gain has been eroded completely as the issue of the falling value of our currency, so the major issue under contention is actually how do we stabilise the value of the naira. Once you don’t stabilise the value of the naira anything imported will have an effect on the larger economy but also on the cost of goods and services.
“This is the reality. So we are actually calling for reviving of the refineries, making them work, don’t export our jobs let us benefit substantially from what God has given us freely.
“Labour has done a lot of studies out of the OPEC countries. We are the only country trying to adopt this IMF imposed model of deregulation on the basis of import driven price mechanism.
“That will not be good for our economy, and that is the idea of our argument that yes you can liberalise but not on this monopoly of making sure that it is only import driven.
“The issue of extending N5,000 to 40 million Nigerians. The impact of the policy of price hike under the name of deregulation will affect every Nigerian citizen either directly or indirectly.
“Either you have a car, a motorcycle, or you use transportation either to move people or bring in farm produce, or you are a medium and small enterprise using a small generator, everybody will be impacted, and so I dont see the wisdom of saying only 40 million people. We have seen some of these policies where people say they are extending support to Nigerians.
“Remember when the organised labour submitted a list of the working poor N50,000 on request to the ministry of Humanitarian Affairs as I speak to you no single person benefitted yet it is being said that everybody benefitted. We don’t have empirical data even on the poor of the poorest. So basically, it is going to be the same way those other policies have gone and that is why we said no because there will be spiral inflation. We have seen that each time there is a slight increase in the pump price of PMS, because of its centrality to our economy, the impact will be very humongous.”
