THE Federal Government may soon be faced with civil and industrial unrest alongside other challenges confronting the country as the Labour movement yesterday threatened to reject the proposed deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry.
Already, the President-General of Trade Union Congress (TUC), Peter Esele, has said the union will not be a part of the negotiations, which begin today between Labour and the Federal Government on the move to hike the price of a litre of petrol to N150.
It was not clear last night who will lead the NLC team to the talks, as one of the deputies of the union's hierarchy, Kiri Mohammed, now deputising for the NLC President, Abdulwaheed Omar, said he had rejected the assignment to participate in the parley.
Mohammed said he had gone to Dutse, Jigawa State where he works at the pension board. In his absence, the lot falls on either Promise Adewusi or Joe Ajaero who are the other deputy presidents.
Also, governors of the 36 states of the federation are poised for another showdown with the Federal Government over the latter's continued deduction of huge amount of money from the Federation Account for fuel subsidy.
In their renewed opposition to the policy, the governors said at the weekend that it was no longer relevant because ordinary Nigerians meant to be the major beneficiaries of the scheme had been sidelined.
The governors further said that the Federal Government is violating the provisions of the Constitution and an earlier agreement they reached on the matter by persistently deducting money for fuel subsidy from source in the Federation Account.
Niger State Governor Mua'zu Babangida Aliyu, who made his colleagues' position on the matter public in Osogbo, Osun State at the weekend, said the government was breaching the agreement the parties reached that the deduction be stopped.
Aliyu lamented that the deduction, which the governors challenged in court, still continues despite an out-of-court settlement sought by the federal authorities on the matter.
And against the backdrop of allegations by organised Labour that the government has increased fuel price and removed the controversial subsidy, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said yesterday that the policy was still in place.
Its Group Public Affairs Manager, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma told The Guardian that the government was yet to do away with fuel subsidy.
He said the government is still consulting with all the stakeholders to ensure the withdrawal of subsidy on petroleum products would be done when it is prudent to take the measure. According to the pricing template of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPA) as at August 15, 2011, the landing cost of a litre of petrol is N129.21; the margin for transporters and marketers is N15.49; the expected pump price is N144.70; while the official pump price is N65.
This means that the government pays N79.70 as subsidy on each litre of petrol.
With about 32 million litres of petrol consumed daily in the country, the government pays about N2.6 billion as subsidy per day.
Esele alleged that government is broke and is desperately looking for where it can get cheap money to finance its projects without first pruning its re-current expenditure.
He said somebody requested him to attend the meeting, "but we (TUC) will not attend. I also know that government is proposing N150 pump price per litre of petrol. We ask how do you do that? There is no infrastructure in place and the recurrent expenditure is as high as 70 per cent. Even a businessman does not run recurrent expenditure of more than 40 per cent talk less of the government of a country. They are quick to announce salary payment as reason for this jerk up, but I ask how much is paid on salary yearly?"
He said the government pays only N11 billion on salary yearly with the new minimum wage to its workers.
Isele asked how much is spent to maintaining ministers, special advisers, senior special advisers, ambassadors, governors, commissioners and National Assembly members yearly?
He alleged that what they call constituency project is a fraud and "yet the government is not interested in plugging all these leakages but interested in removing fuel subsidy. We will resist that unless there is infrastructure for the people."
Esele stressed that government is not coming to the negotiation table with something new saying, "they are not coming to the table with any new idea and therefore nothing new to discuss."
Before the move to increase fuel price, the NLC had scheduled a rally in Abuja for Thursday to protest the state-of-the-nation.
Mohammed while announcing plans for the protest at the weekend in Abuja, said: "In the midst of mass suffering despite our huge natural resources and income, it is provocative for the government to want to further increase the price of petrol. In fact, this will tantamount to cruel injustice against the Nigerian people.
"The primary motive for this planned price increase is the insatiable greed of some politicians to get more money to squander; they see an increase in fuel prices as easy way to access more of the country's wealth. There is also the calculation to render the new minimum wage worthless by embarking on a hyper inflation-inducing project like the astronomical increase in the prices of petroleum products."
The governor said if Abuja believes in fuel subsidy, it should restrict the deduction to its own share of the Federation Account.
He described the deduction as unjustifiable, saying the governors had discovered that it was a calculated attempt to enrich a few individuals at the expense of most Nigerians.
Aliyu queried: "Why should people circumvent the law of the land with impunity? It is part of official corruption. The rule says everything that is generated in the Federation Account should be distributed in accordance with the formula that is on ground. But it is surprising that people still deduct from the source before the distribution. If the NNPC or any other person wants to deduct from the Federal Government allocation, it is alright but you cannot deduct from the source because the issue had been resolved.
"We have discovered that what they call subsidy is no more subsidy to Nigerians but a few elements are profiting from the exercise and so we agreed that the deduction should stop. My position and I think is the position of other governors is that we have decided it must stop and it should stop," he said.
The governor said good governance is an antidote to corruption, stressing that his administration makes graft in the public sector a serious offence that might affect the career progression of offenders.
"By personal disposition, people know that if I get you with corrupt tendency, you are in trouble. If you think I'm also involved, there are other ways that I can be challenged. So openly, I confront anybody and that has permeated down the system and like I talked about transparency anytime money is released, we will let the world know and how the government intends to utilise available resources."
Aliyu said the major problems facing the state government are ghost workers, inflated emolument with the names of retired officers or those who had died still reflected on the nominal payroll.
The Guardian
N65 to N150 per litre, that is exorbitant. What is happening to the oil refineries in Nigeria?