We’ll shut down Nigeria – NLC

We’ll shut down Nigeria – NLC

POLITICS DIGEST- Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says it will shutdown the country if the Federal Government goes ahead with its planned increase in petrol price and electricity tariff this year.

NLC said this in its New Year message signed by its President, Ayuba Wabba.

“Nigerians have suffered enough and will not endure more punishment by way of further petrol and electricity price increases,” the statement said.

It said Nigerians have had enough of what it described as “anti-people policies” of the present administration, and vowed that it would not tolerate such any longer .

NLC said it was opposed to the planned fuel price hike on four points including “deceit and duplicity associated with the politics of ‘petrol price increase’ by successive Nigerian governments” and government’s inability to make the nation’s refineries function.

“The truth is that the perennial increase by government of the pump price of petrol is actually a transfer of government failure and inability to effectively govern to the poor masses of our country,” NLC said.

“We are talking of the failure of government to manage Nigeria’s four oil refineries and inability to build new ones more than thirty 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 her own crude oil.

“During the negotiations that trailed the last increase in petroleum prices, Organised Labour made a cardinal demand on government which is that it must take immediate steps to revamp and rehabilitate Nigeria’s refineries.

“A Technical Committee was set up to monitor progress in this regard. As we all know, the work of the Technical Committee like our abandoned public refineries has ground to a halt and further negotiations with government adjourned sine die for nearly one year now.

“As a responsible social partner, we have at different times called on government to show us what they are doing in response to our demands but silence is the response we get.

“All we hear from government are half-hearted media pronouncements on efforts to allocate funds for the rehabilitation of our public refineries. On ground, there is no commensurate action.

“Between 2012 and now, about $9.5 billion has been spent on Turn Around Maintenance (TAM), Greenfield Refinery Projects and even public investments in private refineries.

“The tragedy is that despite these humungous investments of public funds, government continues to present the crisis of mass importation of refined petroleum products into Nigeria and the consequent import-based pricing regime of refined petroleum products as a fait

accomplishment.

“This neo-colonial narrative in Nigeria’s petroleum sub-sector is what the Nigerian working-class family has rejected as unfathomable and unacceptable as it is antithetical to the notions of sovereignty and self-actualization and a mockery of the sacrifice of our heroes past.

“The advantages and multiplier effects of local refining of petroleum products in Nigeria are enormous. There is the angle of mass job creation, increase in revenue accruable to government, promotion of environmental integrity in oil bearing communities as the scourge of artisanal refining with its deleterious impact on the environment and the consequent unrests and agitation such oil pollution precipitates would take a nose dive.

“The truth is that with self- sufficiency in oil refining, Nigeria will be able to meet not only demand for local consumption but also will be in a grand position to cater for the refined petroleum needs of the sub-region and the African continent as a whole.

“Unfortunately, the comparative advantage that government fails to see as strategic business opportunity, private investors such as Dangote Group are taking this advantage and are moving mountains and valleys to syndicate finance from institutional lenders to establish one of the largest petrochemical refineries in the world in Lekki – Lagos State.

“For us in the labour movement, we do not believe that government is shortsighted to the huge benefits accruable to the commonwealth by the robust development of the downstream petroleum sector especially through investment in the rehabilitation of our four public refineries and building of new refineries.”