Functional Refineries Answer To Fuel Subsidy Impasse, NLC Tells APC Presidential Campaign Council

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday asserted that with functional refineries in the country, problems associated to payment of petrol subsidy will be addressed.

Nigeria has four refineries, built in the 1970s, not one of which has performed optimally, in decades.

The NLC stated this in a statement it issued in response to a query by the APC Presidential Campaign Council.

Earlier on Saturday, the APC Campaign Council asked Labour to state its position on payment of petrol subsidy, in the wake of it’s support for the candidacy of Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).

The NLC is one of the groups that have declared support for the presidential ambition of Obi, a former two-term Governor of Anambra State.

Obi, in August, had said part of his plans, if elected president, will be removal of petroleum subsidy.

The issue of payment of fuel subsidy has been hotly debated in the public space in recent times due to its negative impact of on government revenue.

Ayuba Wabba, NLC President, said it is “atrocious” for Nigeria to buy refined petrol abroad at high cost when the country has crude oil as its natural resources.

“We believe that an issues-based campaign will help sieve the facts from fiction, address burning national issues, review the performance of those in government at all levels, especially on the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), improve Nigeria’s public accountability frameworks, prepare voters behaviour on election day away from the destructive lines of ethno-religious divide and defuse the looming political tension,” he said.

He continued, “Second, in furtherance of the avowed position of the Nigeria Labour Congress on issues-based campaign in the run-up to the 2023 general election, we wish to state that Nigerian workers through a number of painstaking processes have been able to articulate a Nigerian workers’ charter of demands which the
NLC and TUC are using it to engage the political process.

“A major demand in the Nigerian workers charter of demands is that our local public refineries must work. We have also demanded that we must stop 100 percent importation of refined petroleum products.

“The NLC and indeed the labour movement in Nigeria has over many decades been vehemently consistent that the only way to address the issue of the so-called petrol subsidies are to get our refineries to work.

“The logic is very simple: it is atrocious to buy from abroad at very expensive prices a product that a country like ours can easily produce at home.

“At the heart of our demand on the management of Nigeria’s mineral resources especially our downstream petroleum sub-sector is the issue of the production economy.

“We believe that the rescue of Nigeria from the current ruinous path of consumption economy to production economy is the only way to resolve Nigeria’s economic nightmares of massive depletion of scarce foreign exchange reserve; continuous devaluation of the naira; significant jobs haemorrhage and destruction, deepening of poverty and downturn in the living standards of our people.”

Wabba further said the congress was determined to ensure the adoption of it’s workers’ charter demands into all political manifestos.

He said this aligns with Labour’s persuasion that issue-based campaigns anchored on the manifesto of political parties should drive Nigeria’s political process.

“If any political party goes around saying that they plan to sell our refineries, remove subsidies, and further oppress long-suffering Nigerians, they should be ready to defend such stance to Nigerians during the campaigns.

“The NLC, organized labour, and Labour Party position has not changed. It only got amplified,” he added.