The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) after warning to shut down Nigeria in their new year message due to fuel price increase, has maintained that the masses and workers will no longer accept additional increases in the pump price of fuel in the name of subsidy removal.

The Congress has compelled the workers and citizens of the country to equip themselves for a war against the hike in fuel price.

NLC warns the government over fuel price increase

In the New Year message titled the YEAR 2022 FELICITATIONS: KEEPING OUR HOPES AND ASPIRATIONS ALIVE IN THE NEW YEAR, the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, named Taraba, Kogi, Zamfara, Benue, Imo, Abia and Cross River as the seven states yet to execute the N30,000 minimum wage that took effect in 18th April, 2019.

He directed the aforementioned states to immediately launch indefinite strikes to compel the state governors to enforce the new wage.

NLC, in a 9-page statement, revealed that the government is determined to continue with further increase in the pump price of petrol labeled "removal of subsidy." The Organized labour has started that its stand on the matter has been made clear.

They revealed that the government has been warned in very clear terms that Nigerians have suffered and therefore, will not undergo further punishment by petrol and electricity price hikes.

  “Our position in this regard is predicated on four major grounds. First is our concern on the deceit and duplicity associated with the politics of “petrol price increase” by successive Nigerian governments. The truth is that the perennial increase by the government in the pump price of petrol is actually a transfer of government failure and inability to effectively govern to the poor masses of our country.

We are talking of the failure of government to manage Nigeria’s four oil refineries and inability to build new ones more than thirty years after the last petrochemical refinery in Port Harcourt was commissioned; the failure to rein in smuggling; and the failure to determine empirically the quantity of petrol consumed in Nigeria.

The shame takes a gory dimension with the fact that Nigeria is the only OPEC country that cannot refine her own crude oil.

  “During the negotiations that trailed the last increase in petroleum prices, Organized Labour made a cardinal demand on government which is that it must take immediate steps to revamp and rehabilitate Nigeria’s refineries.

A Technical Committee was set up to monitor progress in this regard. As we all know, the work of the Technical Committee like our abandoned public refineries has ground to a halt and further negotiations with the government adjourned sine die for nearly one year now.

As a responsible social partner, we have at different times called on the government to show us what they are doing in response to our demands but silence is the response we get.”