“Phantom” Palliative robs poor to pay rich — NLC blows hot

 

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has reacted to the recent economic realities facing Nigerians and particularly the increase in pump price of Petrol and palliatives.

Choicereporters report that the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) was hiked for the second time in just two months following the removal of fuel subsidy.

According to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), a litre of petrol will now cost N617.

Reacting to this news in a statement signed Tuesday by Comrade Joe Ajaero, the NLC national president, the labour body decried the “unprecedented hardship, sorrow, anguish and suffering upon Nigerian workers and masses”.

Choicereporters recall that in early June, the union had threatened strike action as a result of the abrupt removal of fuel subsidies. The president had then brokered a deal with the NLC, causing them to also suspend strike and protest plans.

According to the authorities, the president was able to reach 7 key agreements with the NLC and other labour unions in a bid to abort the strike.

However, in the statement released on Tuesday, the NLC accused the Federal Government of “resorting to impunity and imperiousness in governance”.

The NLC also fingered what it described as a “phantom” palliative announcement, labelling it an attempt at “robbing the people of Nigeria to pay and feed the Rich”.

“It is on this basis that the NLC strongly condemns the decision of the Tinubu-led administration to seek the approval of the National Assembly to obtain another tranche of external loans worth N500b from the World Bank for the purposes of carrying out a phantom palliative measure to cushion the effect of its poorly thought-out hike in the prices of Premium Motor Spirit,” the statement read.

In a reference to the Presidential Task Force set up by Nigeria President Bola Tinubu in the aftermath of the subsidy removal, the NLC posited that recent actions of the FG showed a lack of commitment to awaiting the presidential committee’s recommendations.

“We do not understand why the federal government would seek to undermine itself as its action suggests. Why not wait for the Committee to sit and come up with the needed recommendations which would then guide government’s fiscal and monetary policies? Seeking to borrow and going to the NASS for an approval means that it has already taken decisions on what it wants to do and has a budget thus is in need to borrow to fund these activities. Like they will tell you; it is a fait accompli,” the statement read.

The committee in question is the National Economic Council (NEC), which is led by Vice President Kashim Shettima and instructed to devise interventions to mitigate the impact of subsidy removal on Nigerians.

Meanwhile, probing the concreteness of the federal government’s plan to distribute N8000 for 12 low-income households as palliatives, the NLC reiterated a lack of confidence in “how the data for the never changing 12m poorest households was generated”.

“We reiterate that we do not have confidence in how the data for the never changing 12m poorest households was generated neither do we have confidence in the mechanisms being pursued for the distribution of the cash transfers,” the labour body said.

The statement ended with the NLC threatening to review their engagement with the new administration “if the government does not want to stop these fortuitous actions that it is pursuing in the name of palliatives”.

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