Fuel Crisis: Labour threatens mass action

By Obinna Ezugwu

Organised labour has warned it would embark on mass action if the country’s lingering fuel crisis persists.

National Executive Committee (NEC) member of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Issa Aremu gave the warning in a statement in Kaduna on Thursday. He however, commended President of the Senate, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki for directing the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) to cut short its recess and immediately convene industry stakeholders’ meeting in a bid to end the ongoing crisis.

He noted that the protracted fuel crisis was a reflection of “crisis of corporate governance in the petroleum sector.” According to him, “the bane of down stream 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.

Comrade 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,” and “useful organ of public opinion,” adding that legislators cannot be in recess when those who elected them are groaning at fuel stations.

He urged the legislators to demand for “consequences for the actions and inactions of petroleum sector operators in the product shortage scam,” pointing out that “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 “NNPC is the only public corporation that annually awards its directors long service incentives for no service at all, for non-functioning refineries” called for a “total ban on importation to reinvent domestic refineries and beneficiation to crude oil”.