The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has reiterated its position on the removal of fuel subsidy in spite of the demands by the All Progressives Congress (APC).
The APC Presidential Campaign Council had dared the leadership of NLC and other left-wing supporters of the Labour Party (LP) to come clean on the position of its flagbearer, Peter Obi.
The campaign council said the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, promised to remove fuel subsidy if elected as president in 2023.
Reacting in a statement signed by its President, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, the NLC said that they had painstaking processes and articulated a Nigerian Workers’ Charter of Demands which the organised labour would use to engage in the political process.
They explained that as they have stated in the past the NLC strongly believe that to deal with the fuel subsidy situation in the country they have to get the refineries to work.
He said; “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 per cent importation of refined petroleum products.
“The NLC and indeed the labour movement in Nigeria had over many decades been vehemently consistent that the only way to address the issue of the so-called petrol subsidies is to get our refineries to work.
“The logic is very simple: it is not economical to buy from abroad at very expensive prices a product that a country like ours can easily produce at home.”
He insisted that the congress believed that the rescue of Nigeria from the current path of a consumption economy to a production economy was the only way to resolve Nigeria’s economic nightmares of massive depletion of scarce foreign exchange reserves.
Wabba explained that if this was achieved it would resolve the fall of the Naira against the dollar and reduce the lack of jobs poverty and downturn in the living standards of the people.
“In a determined effort to popularise the positions in the Nigerian Workers Charter of Demands, the NLC and TUC at the behest of the Labour Party on Monday and Tuesday hosted a National Retreat of the leadership cadres in our movement.
“At the retreat, the Labour Party and Organised Labour in Nigeria adopted and mainstreamed the Workers Charter of Demands into the Manifesto of the Labour Party.
“This is in line with our 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, they should be ready to defend such stance to Nigerians at the campaigns,” he added.
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