Abdullahi M. Gulloma
The fifth month of the year, May, is symbolic to hundreds of millions of two categories of people the world over: workers and children. The first day of the month is celebrated globally as Workers’ Day, while May 27 is reserved for lnternational Children’s Day. Given that the average worker is his family’s bread winner and that children are the leaders of tomorrow, May is truly significant in our lives- one way or the other.
If you asked Nigerian workers, however, many of them would declare that this month had been anything but sweet for them. May had dawned with the nation still in the vile grip of weeks-long fuel shortage and the attendant spiraling inflation. Small wonder the last May Day was marked in a rather sombre way, with both public and private sector workers wondering for how long the crippling situation would drag on.
Unknown to them, an elephant-size punch was on the way. This was delivered last week in form of government’s unheralded announcement of a fuel price increment from N86.50 to N145 in onefell swoop. A hike of about 70 percent. By way of contrast, the same incumbent administration had earlier in the year effected a price pump reduction from N89 to N86.50 Though some regarded that reduction to be too “tokenish” to be appreciated, others nonetheless saw it as a sign of better deals to come from the government and its change mantra.
Expectedly, the new fuel pump price was not received with universal adulation. Shock and disbelief swept across the land, even as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) leadership (or at least a faction of the Congress) vowed to resist it. NLC president, Ayuba Wabba and co, made it clear that by increasing fuel price so high in the name of subsidy removal even as inflation had risen astronomically without a corresponding salary increment, the government was being insensitive to workers’ plight.
The federal government, on its part, had waxed lyrical about the need to hike petrol price. According to the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mr. Ibe Kachikwu.
by removing the controversial fuel subsidy once and for all, the Mahammadu Buhari administration would free the scarce funds that it had been pumping into the payment of subsidy claims into development of decaying infrastructure. Aside from that, plenty of funds would be available to implement the government’s social security programme, added Kachiwu, who is also the Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC).
On the strength of Kachikwu’s, hard-to-fault presentation, every compatriot would normally want to support the government’s action. But, alas, it so happens that in the past 28 years, that is the same story that has been retold again and again by successive administrations to justify the need to raise fuel price.
Yet, curiously, from General Ibrahim Babangida and General Sani Abacha through Olusegun Obasanjo to Goodluck Jonathan, no past administration has anything to show for indulging in fuel price hike. Consider the roads which, according to successive governments, would become better managed once revenue from petrol price like began to flow into the government’s coffer. The roads have remained as derelict as ever. And so have the education and heath sectors, electricity supply, and so forth.
The most pathetic aspect of the subsidy palaver is that, according to the renowned university don, Professor Tam David West, there is in actual fact no such subsidy in the first place! Indeed way back in 2000, the remarkable legal icon and activist Chief Gani Fawehinmi (of blessed memory) had published an insightful pamphlet judiciously spiced with facts and figures in which he, among other points, proved that the so-called subsidy is a cleverly contrived sham.
That, however, is by the way; what confronts us as a country is the shocking narrative of a nation which, despite its over-flowing oil resources, cannot refine the product for domestic consumption. In fact, Nigeria stands tall as the only producer on earth that cannot refine fuel for local use, never mind export. By way of contrast, India, a nation that has no oil, boasts of hundreds of refineries compared with Nigeria’s four scandalously epileptic refineries. One state in India alone is said to have more than ten functional refineries!
This brings us to the issue of indefinite strike which is being championed by the NLC. Ordinarily, the industrial action would have started simultaneously across the country on Wednesday, with all workers complying. But such is the peculiar nature of this particular strike that discordant tunes reigned supreme.
To checkmate the pro-strike camp, the federal government rushed to the industrial court and obtained an injunction against the strike. The NLC is insisting that the strike must go on indefinitely because no such court process was served on it. The legality or otherwise of the strike is a subject matter for another day.
From the foregoing and other unfolding developments, it is obvious that the fallout of the fuel price hike will linger for a while. It is important to follow the footsteps of Governor Adams Aliyu Oshiomhole of Edo state on this crisis. Fielding questions from reporters on the forthcoming gubernatorial election in the state, Oshiomhole said he cannot be neutral on the choice of his successor.
In view of that, one cannot also be neutral on this fuel price issue.
I have said it, and rightly too, that it is in the interest of workers in particular and Nigerians in general to make this strike effective and compel government to reverse this obnoxious policy. The point must be made that the ongoing strike is not about NLC and its leadership because 99.9 percent of the officials of the Congress and its affiliates can afford to buy fuel at a thousand Naira per litre.
Therefore, all of us owe it a duty to continue to mobilise and make the strike effective until the federal government accedes to the demand of the Nigerian masses being represented by the Nigeria Labour Congress. Any attempt to continue to justify this fuel price increase would clearly be viewed as a support to make life increasingly difficult for the already bruised and battered working class and the masses.