Petrol at N617/Litre: We’ll turn To Self-Help, FG on Path to Dictatorship – NLC

Fuel Price at Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation

Tuesday's increase in the price of petrol from N539 to N617 per litre had an immediate impact on the cost of transportation and other commodities. This came as millions of Nigerians voiced their grievances about how tough it is getting to survive.

The most recent increase occurred less than two months after the price of fuel increased by more than 200 percent, from N195 to over N500/litre, at a time when growing inflation was severely eroding the income of Nigerians.

According to reports, the most recent spike made it difficult for many Nigerians to commute, even as those drivers who could afford it flocked to fuel stations to purchase the product out of dread for the future.

At the end of the workday, major cities all throughout the nation witnessed mass trekking. According to market forces, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Ltd. acknowledged the change in pump prices from N539 to N617 per liter on Tuesday.

The latest increase in the price of gasoline at the pump outraged the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), which expressed this on Tuesday.

In a statement, the group's president, Joe Ajaero, said they refrained from making any further public comments on the "vexatious issues around the recent but unfortunate unilateral hike in the price of PMS in the guise of the so-called subsidy withdrawal, which has unleashed predictably as we had earlier warned unimaginable and unprecedented hardship, sorrow, anguish, and suffering upon Nigerian workers and masses."

The government of Nigeria appears to have been misled into thinking that using impunity and imperiousness in governance in a democracy is a beneficial option as it pursues its stated and unstated objectives, he said, even though their patience was based on their strong and abiding faith in the outcomes of the processes of social dialogue and its mechanisms, especially in a democratic setting.

“It is this belief that we are sure has continued shaping the actions of this government since its inauguration on the 29th day of May, 2023 to continue inflicting mindless and heartless pains on the populace one after the other without the decency of embracing the tenets of democracy, which requires wide and deep stakeholder consultation on weighty matters of state.

“As it stands, rather than reciprocate the goodwill of Nigerian workers, the federal government has insisted on threading the path of dictatorship and seeking to impoverish the people further by taking steps that can only be described as robbing the people of Nigeria to pay and feed the rich.

“It is on this basis that the NLC strongly condemns the decision of the Tinubu led administration to seek the approval of the National Assembly to obtain another tranche of external loans worth N500b from the World Bank for the purposes of carrying out a phantom palliative measure to cushion the effect of its poorly thought-out hike in the prices of Premium Motor Spirit. Remember that the U$800m, which was already proposed before the devaluation of the Naira by this government was worth about N400b then but is now worth about N650b after devaluation. It is from this, it proposes to bring out N500b for distribution.

“The proposal to pay N8,000 to each of the so-called 12 million poorest Nigerian households for a period of six months insults our collective intelligence and makes a mockery of our patience and abiding faith in social dialogue, which the government may have alluded to albeit pretentiously,” he said.

The National Assembly members' request for payment of N70 billion and the judiciary's request for payment of N36 billion, among other proposals, drew disapproval from the labor leader, who remarked that "this is the most insensitive, reckless, and brazen diversion of our collective patrimony into the pockets of public officers whose sworn responsibility it is to protect our nation's treasury."

He continued by saying it seemed like the federal government was just misleading Nigerians on how to handle the subsidy removal for the sake of everyone.

“It is important to inform Nigerians that despite having shown our readiness to commence work in the committees, the federal government, which convenes the meetings, is yet to inaugurate the National Steering Committee thus stalling the work of the proposed committees.

“We do not want to provide a cover for the government to get away with the hardship it has imposed on the people. We do not want to legitimize impunity.

“As a result, if the government does not want to stop these fortuitous actions that it is pursuing in the name of palliatives, we will be forced to constructively review our engagement with the government on this vexatious issue and take matters into our own hands,” the NLC president said.