By Uche Amunike
The president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), has condemned the hike in fuel pump prices by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), stating that it is wrong for a registered private company to dictate fuel prices for Nigerians.
Recall that the NNPC had raised the retail price of petrol to N1,030 from N897 per litre, across some of its retail outlets in the federal capital territory. This new price would be the second time it was increased in one month, as it had earlier increased the prices from N617 per litre to N897 per litre in September, thereby registering a 14.8% or N133 rise in the fuel pump price.
Speaking, during his address at the book launch of Sharon Ijasan in Abuja on Wednesday, the NLC president, Joe Ajaero addressed the recent development by faulting President Bola Tinubu’s administration for failing to implement its Compressed Natural Gas initiative after over a year since its inauguration. He noted that the refinery was yet to begin operations, even though there were agreements between the federal government, the NLC and the Trade Union Congress.
His words: ‘As we are sitting down here, they have gone to increase pump price of petroleum again. Now what do you do in such instances? They expect us to buy it. Even things we have been asking for, CNG as an alternative, for more than one year, we have been asking for the commencement of work at the Port Harcourt refinery, we had an agreement to that effect – NLC, TUC, and the federal government.’
‘We have heard that Dangote Refinery is producing locally and prices are going up. All the indices they gave to us about the need to deregulate, have proven negative. You are fixing prices as a private company. As far as I’m concerned, except something has happened to CAC, NNPCL is now a private company. Can that same NNPCL dictate the price for Dangote and other private companies? Those are issues, those are questions begging for answers.’
Ajaero called for the immediate reversal of the fuel price hike, especially as previous increases never produced any positive results.
He maintained that because of the logic of market forces, it is wrong for NNPC to fix prices and project itself as a hegemonic monopoly.
Speaking, through a statement which he titled: ‘What Next after Increasing Pump Price?’, the NLC president decried the manner in which the federal government increases pump price of petrol without considering the commensurate capacity of Nigerians or mitigatory measures.
The statement partly read: ‘We challenge the government to go to the drawing board and present us with a blueprint for inclusive economic growth and national development instead of this spasmodic ad hocism and palliative policy.’
‘It needs no stating the fact that the latest wave of increase has grossly altered the calculations of Nigerians once again at a time they were reluctantly coming to terms with their new realities. It will further deepen poverty as production capacities dip, and more jobs lost with multidimensional negative effects.’
‘In light of this, we urge the government to immediately reverse this rate hike as previous increases did not produce any good results. People only got poorer. But more fundamentally, the government should be bold enough to tell Nigerians in advance the destination it wants to take the country’, he concluded.
