Reacting to the recent hike in the pump price of fuel to N170 per litre, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has warned that there’s is a limit to what Nigerians can tolerate, adding that there were questions over financiers of political parties known to be the architects of the current woes in the petroleum sector.
Organised Labour also asked the government to account for the several Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) projects that were undertaken. These sentiments were contained in a statement by the President of NLC, Ayuba Wabba, on Monday, with Congress cautioning, “that there was a limit to what the citizens could tolerate if these abysmal increases in the price of refined petroleum products and other essential goods and services continued.”
It added that “Nigerians cannot be made to bleed endlessly for the failures of successive government to properly manage our refineries, ensure value for money for the numerous Turn Around Maintenance (TAM), which were poorly and barely executed.”
On the negative impact of businessmen and financiers on the sector, labour said there was a “horrifying lack of interest in prosecuting public officials and private business people who have profited from the rot in our petroleum sector and the collective misery they have imposed on the general population.
“The truth is that we would not have been in this precarious situation if the government had been alive to its responsibilities. “The question in the minds of many Nigerians is if the government is willing to go headlong against major financiers of the major political parties known to the public as the architects of the current national woe. “Organised Labour will not accept a fait accompli of the monopoly of Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector or the emergence of a cartel of oligarchs whose end game is mass pauperisation.”
Labour assured of updates from the petroleum sector and electricity committee, which would determine whether the government has kept to its side of the bargain to recover and reposition refineries.
