Organised Labour has said it will no longer tolerate fuel price increase in the country. This is as it raised alarm over what it described as last-minute looting of the treasury by out-going governors, ministers and other political office holders and called on President Muhammad Buhari to do everything possible to stop them.
Leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and their Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, counterparts, raised the alarm in a joint address delivered at the National Workers’ Day celebration held at Eagle Square, Abuja.
In the May Day speech, titled: “Workers Rights and Socio-economic Justice” jointly read by NLC President, Joe Ajaero, and President of TUC, Festus Osifo, Organised Labour called for the investigation of the N12 billion spent by the Aviation Ministry to buy 10 fire trucks.
NLC and TUC equally urged the Federal Government not to heed the International Monetary Fund, IMF’s advice on tax increase and all its economic advice “as they are poisonous to our nation’s economic health.”
Among other demands, NLC and TUC asked that “the privatisation of the electricity sector be reviewed in favour of Nigerians, and the Judiciary should purge itself and redeem our democracy by its handling of the various election petitions before it.
“The outgoing President must take steps to ensure that those in his administration planning last-minute heists on the nation’s treasury are stopped.”
According to them, the nation’s “economy is on autopilot, struggling on its own to survive, while those entrusted to manage it kept throwing filth and injecting toxins into it.”
They lamented that the nation had gone deeper into a serious debt trap, saying: “Our debt profile as a nation must worry every patriot and it worries us not just as workers but also as citizens of Nigeria. We have warned repeatedly of the dangers of excessive borrowing of foreign exchange-denominated loans and alerted the nation of the inherent danger, urging the nation’s economic managers to desist but all of these fell on deaf ears with some very unfortunate attempts at justification. This prodigious borrowing has almost left our nation’s economy stranded and fiscally insufficient.
“It is projected by the Debt Management Office, DMO, that by this month, our total public debt will be about N77 trillion, meaning that by the time this administration exits on the 29th, each Nigerian will be owing about N384,860 only.
“Today, our external debt profile stands at around U$42billion and is increasing and the debt to GDP ratio is about 39 per cent. Then, the most worrying, is our debt service as of 2022 to revenue stands at 81 per cent but this year’s budget shows that it is at 123 per cent meaning that we will be unable to service our debts without borrowing. That is for every N100 we earn as income, we need to borrow an additional N23 from somewhere just to pay interest on our debt.
“It looks like, in our nation, the only reason we borrow is to steal because we cannot see its benefits for the people. We insist that while nations can borrow for productive reasons such as investments in well-thought-out projects, it is unhealthy to borrow for consumption. Even a child knows this and that is why we are surprised that at this dying period of this administration, it has decided to receive loans of USD 800 million, as it claimed, to cushion the suffering it plans to inflict on the masses of this nation. If this is not a cash-out, then, it is entirely ill-advised and counter-productive given the history of such in our nation.
“We call on the Federal Government to consider the incorporation of transition fuels such as Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, as an addition to currently available energy in Nigeria. The use of CNG which is a lot cheaper can also be a long-term alternative to petrol thus saving Nigerians of the current and future spiralling cost of petrol.
“We urge our economic managers to be more prudent and seek ways to deliberately diversify our economy by deepening manufacturing capacity and investing in human capital that would drive youth creativity which is key to industrialisation. We advocate a freeing of capital for MSMEs and then a deliberate direct investment by governments at all levels in setting up manufacturing entities across the nation.
“Hiding under the neo-liberal maxim that the government has no business in business rings hollow and is not true. In a weak economy like ours, the Government has business in business and we must invest in businesses to drive economic growth in our nation.”
Decrying the mismanagement of the country’s energy sector, NLC and TUC, said: “It is crucial that any nation that cannot manage its energy resources effectively and efficiently is doomed. One of the key factors holding us down as a nation is our inability to manage this sector effectively for the benefit of the citizens and the nation.
“Power, however, it is generated, remains key to jump-starting any economy while Oil and Gas is critical to robust energy success in every country. It is therefore crucial for the government to work with the people to create frameworks that would make energy work for Nigerians instead of for the few who have succeeded in capturing the state.
“For decades now, we have used all forms of persuasion to make the Federal Government fix the refineries and possibly build new ones but all to no avail. There seems to be a deliberate sabotage of our domestic refineries to ensure that it remains none operational so that few fat cats will continue profiting from the sinful importation of refined petroleum products into the country at the detriment of the economy.
“Our dear country extracts crude, exports to refine and import to sell to the citizens and turns around to talk about subsidy. We insist that we will no longer allow any increase in petroleum product prices in whatever guise until all our Local refineries are reactivated and are fully operational. We will not allow the continued gang-up of the elite against Nigerian workers and masses to continue unabated.
“Congress has been following the activities going on at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC Trading Limited, especially as regards assigning products to marketers. We also watch with keen interest the goings on at the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, to ensure issues of cargo clearance, tracking compliance, route inspection, metering calibration/maintenance, accurate delivery to trucks, record keeping, etc. are expeditiously taken care of. We demand the inclusion of NUPENG and PENGASSAN in the Steering Committee set up by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.”
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