Folorunsho Ogini, chairman, Lagos zone of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria has disclosed plans by the Association to embark on a 3-day strike on Wednesday March 23.
Speaking during a protest march staged by the association on Friday, Mr. Ogini advised fuel users to “Buy enough fuel that can last three days.”
A nationwide strike
The protest was one of four staged simultaneously on Friday in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna. According to Mr. Ogini a similar protest will be held on Monday in Abuja before the strike proper.
“On Wednesday, the whole oil workers in the country, tanker drivers, petrol attendants and anybody in the oil industry, would go on 3-day symbolic total shutdown,” said Mr. Ogini. “So go and buy fuel. We are not punishing Nigerians. It is for the good of the nation. So that future generations will not curse us. Everything will be shut down, including the rigs where government gets its money.”
Reasons for the strike
According to Mr. Ogini, the strike is the answer to government’s plan to deregulate the industry
He said: “The federal government wants to fully deregulate the oil industry, This means that you will wake up one day, and petrol will sell for N350 per litre. So how many of us will survive such condition? Before you can deregulate, some things should be in place, which are not.
We have four refineries and only two are working at a capacity of less that 10 percent. Turnaround maintenance has been going on for three years in Kaduna refinery but nothing to show for it. If you deregulate without the refineries working at full capacity, it means we’ll still be importing. Today, we have $1 to N180 which I learnt will soon hit N200. They are killing the masses of this nation and we say no.”
The insecurity of the members of the two associations in the Niger Delta is another reason Mr. Ogini gave for the proposed strike.
“In the Niger Delta, daily killing and maiming goes on there,” he said.
“So we want security for everybody there, not only our members alone. But the different tiers of government are playing lip service to these issues without taking any action.
If we are doing the right thing, we’ll have been able to bring the criminals, kidnappers to justice. Collectively, we have wronged the people of Niger Delta; it is time to make adjustment. Let the government put something on ground to show that, actually, the Niger Delta will have peace.”
Other issues included the welfare of the members of the two associations at the end of the purported privatisation of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation.
“They want to sell NNPC, and nobody is talking about the welfare of our members. Why are they buying government parastatals? Licences were given to build refineries, they refuse to build so why buying that of federal government?
Two years ago, we were told that the privatisation of the cement industry will bring the price down to about N400, but today, it sells for about N2,000. Can we expect anything better with the privatisation of NNPC?”