By Aliyu Askira
Kano
President Muhammadu Buhari has been advised not to succumb to the threat by the organised labour to embark on indefinite strike because of recent removal of subsidy on petroleum product instead government should go ahead and roll out palliative measures that will alleviate the suffering that Nigerians are undergoing.
Going by available records, according to Shettima Umar Abbagana, who retired from NNPC as a Senior Manager and worked in different departments of NNPC said that Labour will only make things worse if they decide to go on strike simply because government has decided to completely deregulate the petroleum industry.
“What is subsidy in the first place, it is nothing but a scam normally perpetrated by major oil barons, in collaboration with top government officials mostly from the petroleum ministry, politicians and some corrupt government officials on corridors of powers, these is what they normally do to siphon billions of Naira from government treasury in the name of subsidy”
What they normally do is to say the oil marketers will transport fuel from NNPC depot to various states in the federation or import fuel at a cheaper rate and sell to Nigerians at exorbitant prices or transport fuel to states in the federation by air and submit a proposal for a claim of Billions of Naira for what they call bridging, but most of these are fake, dubious it is a criminal way of shortchanging
Nigerians, except labour is telling us that they want these fraud to continued, the best way out is to accept the total removal of the subsidy.
Abbagana, who was a former Lecturer with Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, who also worked with Ashaka Cement Company, Bauchi, Industrial Training Fund Jos, before he joined NNPC and retired after putting several years of service in a statement in Kano challenged labour to first confront Nigerian governors who are not able to pay workers salaries to explain how they spend the recent bailout fund granted to them by President Buhari through CBN.
Secondly during the last regime there was a time petrol was selling for more than $160 per liter the government at that time got billions of dollars and even created sovereign wealth fund in which billions were also deposited but all these monies were spent by the 3 tiers of government leaving four existing refineries in bad shape and today government is finding it difficult to put them in proper use.
