Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) said on Wednesday that it would resist further attempts by the Federal Government to increase the prices of petroleum products, urging that urgent steps be taken instead to fix the nation’s refineries.
General Secretary of the Congress, John Odah, during a news briefing on Wednesday in Abuja, said the insistence by government that it is spending huge sums on fuel subsidy was untenable owing to the unbearable cost of petroleum products on the poor masses, industry operators and other players in the economy.
Odah, through a communiqu� read at the Labour House, said the Congress was still at a fix to understand why government should consistently hike petroleum prices when palliative measures to curb the effect on the citizens were completely lacking.
He said it was unfortunate for government to reduce a serious issue to a simple minded declaration, adding that only the Minister of State for Petroleum probably believes that inflicting higher fuel prices on the populace would not hurt the poor.
While berating government for stating that it was merely subsidising the rich car owners, he added that the essence of NLC’s opposition to the proposed increment is its negative implication on the citizens, particularly the poor who constitute 70 per cent of the population.
He said it was disheartening that following the last labour strike over fuel price hike at the inception of President Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration, the preliminary stakeholders’ forum set up on January 8 to review fuel prices was yet to be constituted.
“Given the absence of alternative modes of transportation, Nigeria still relies almost exclusively on road transportation to move people and goods. Therefore, high costs of fuel affect everybody, especially the poor.”
According to Odah, “if we have additional refineries refining our crude oils, the country would have been producing sufficient quantity of fuel that nobody will be talking of fuel subsidy.
“Government is harping on the excuse that it takes two or three years to build a refinery without considering the fact that virtually all the industries in the country are collapsing on the heels of the negative energy sector,” he stated.