The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has kicked against the new fuel price of N143.8 announced by the Petroleum Products Price Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) on Wednesday, saying “this might just be the last straw that would break the camel’s back.”
The congress demanded a reversal of the pump price to the old price, arguing that that the prices of crude oil in the international market had only slightly increased from the previous price before the downward review was announced two months ago.
The NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, in a statement on Thursday, described the hike in the fuel pump price and the proposed electricity tariff hike as “potent threat to run millions of Nigerians under.”
Wabba flayed the PPPRA Executive Secretary, Saidu Abdulkadir, for the fuel price hike and asked the Federal Government to rehabilitate the refineries and disclose the timelines for this.
Wabba said, “Government simply wants to transfer the cost of its own inefficiencies to the Nigerian people. Nigerian workers say ‘no’ to such.
“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.”
