[BREAKING NEWS] NLC Rejects Fuel Price Hike, Demands Reversal

The Nigeria Labor Congress has kicked against the new fuel cost of N143.8 reported by the Petroleum Products Price Regulatory Agency on Wednesday, saying "this may very well be the issue that is finally too much to bear that would crush the camel's spirit." 

The congress requested an inversion of the siphon cost to the old cost, contending that that the costs of raw petroleum in the worldwide market had just somewhat expanded from the past cost before the descending audit was reported two months prior. 

The NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, in an announcement on Thursday, depicted the climb in the fuel siphon cost and the proposed power duty climb as "strong danger to run a great many Nigerians under." 

He requested that the Federal Government restore the processing plants and reveal the courses of events for this. 

Wabba excoriated the PPPRA Executive Secretary, Saidu Abdulkadir at the fuel cost climb, taking note of that "he didn't pretend misrepresentation that legislature has renounced its duty to shield Nigerians from the vicious inclinations of neo-liberal market powers." 

Wabba noted:- 

“Nigerians would recall that the last downward review in the price of petrol was at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. The economic benefits of the so-called “downward” review were hardly enjoyed by ordinary Nigerians who were mostly indoors.

“Just as the lockdown is being eased out and as soon as the interstate travel ban was lifted, the government decided to hike the petrol price. Nigerian people and workers are forced to interpret this move as grand mischief and deceit.

“It is clear even to the blind that the crisis in our downstream petroleum sub-sector is ‘self’ nay government-inflicted.”

The congress ascribed the emergency in the downstream segment to the refusal by progressive governments to fix the national petroleum processing plants. 

“Government simply wants to transfer the cost of its own inefficiencies to the Nigerian people. Nigerian workers say ‘No’ to such. There is no way Nigerians would accept a situation where we are charged international rates for a product which Nigeria is the sixth-largest producer in the world.

“The extra costs that the PPPRA wants Nigerians to pay in order to promote ‘growth’ and ‘investment’ are actually the cost of profits made by countries that we ship our crude oil to, the cost of sea freight of the refined products, the cost of demurrage at our seaports when the refined products arrive, the cost of the frequent devaluation of our national currency, and the cost of official corruption by gatekeepers managing the downstream petroleum sub-sector,” the NLC argued.