UPDATE: Nigerian Unions' Oil Sector Protests To Go Ahead
(Updates with additional Labor comments, background)
IBADAN, Nigeria -(Dow Jones)- The Nigerian umbrella labor organization will go
ahead with its nationwide mass protests against the deregulation of the
downstream sector of the country's oil industry despite a government appeal to
abandon them, union officials said Tuesday.
A Nigeria Labor Congress official said the first phase of the protest will
begin in Lagos, Wednesday, followed by rallies in the southern town of Asaba
Friday and the northern cities of Kano and Maiduguri Tuesday and Thursday next
week.
The second phase according to him will be held in the southern cities of
Ibadan and Enugu and the northern city of Makurdi and finally in Abuja, the
Nigerian capital. No dates have been fixed for the second phase.
The NLC said the rallies are aimed at compelling the government to rescind the
proposed full deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry, approve
a new minimum wage for workers and implement a report of a committee on
political reforms.
Labor Minister Adetokunbo Kayode at the weekend appealed to the NLC to shelve
the rallies saying that government would look into their demands.
Finance Minister Mansur Muhtar said in February that the government planned to
end subsidies on petroleum products sold to Nigerians because it could no longer
bear the 640 billion naira ($4.34 billion) spent yearly on subsidies.
He also said the downstream sector of the oil industry will be fully
deregulated and state-owned oil refineries privatized.
Peter Adeyemi, NLC deputy president, said: "with deregulation, prices will
soar; there will be fuel hoarding, profiteering, adulteration and scarcity will
be the order of the day. We shall return to the days of long queues at fuel
stations which what government's experimentation with deregulation is now
causing."
He said: "our protest is over the refusal of the [President Umaru] Yar'Adua
administration to negotiate and increase workers' minimum wage and general
reviews of wages in the country."
He said the existing minimum wage of NGN5,500 fixed in 2000 is one of the
lowest in Africa and cannot sustain a worker's basic needs.
According to him, in the last two years, political office holders' salaries in
Nigeria have been increased by over 800% while the minimum wage has remained
constant at the 2000 level.
He said workers believed the government should build new refineries instead of
deregulating gasoline prices adding "it is logic that if Nigeria refines its
crude oil, it will realize more income than merely exporting the crude."
The rallies are being organized by labor and the civil societies under the
aegis of the Labor Civil Society Coalition, or LASCO.
-By Obafemi Oredein, contributing to Dow Jones Newswires; 234 2 7510489
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
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