The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has threatened to embark on a strike should the fuel scarcity currently being experienced exceeds December.
Isa Aremu, a chieftain of the Labour organisaton said this in a statement issued in Kaduna. Aremu said the situation might compel Nigerians to return to street protests as they had done in the past “to force the ruling elites to face up to the challenges of governance of the most populous, promising but badly governed country on the continent.”
“The one month long fuel shortage has further worsened poverty (and) put productivity on hold. We dare not enter the new year with this recurring old mess,” the statement said. He said that the protracted fuel crisis was a reflection of “crisis of corporate governance in the petroleum sector.”
According to the labour leader, the bane of downstream sector was “abysmal absence of accountability, transparency and openness in the administration of the petroleum resources of Nigeria, adding that only the parliament can make a difference in exposing the rot in the sector.”
Aremu said the Senate leadership, by urging relevant committee members to resume duty, has shown that the legislature is truly “a vent for public grievances, a “useful organ of public opinion” adding that legislators cannot be in recess when those who elected them are groaning in filling stations.
The labour leader urged the legislators to demand for “consequences for the actions and inactions of petroleum sector operators in the product shortage scam”.
He said: “There is a deep seated conflict of interest in the downstream sector; regulators are operators, regulators are importers, importers are products hoarders, regulators are also saboteurs. Definitely, we have a sector capture in our hands. Nigeria and Nigerians need liberation.”
The Labour leader, who disclosed that the NNPC is the only public corporation that annually awards its directors long service incentives for no service done and for non-functioning refineries, called for a “total ban on importation to reinvent domestic refineries and beneficiation to crude oil.”
