The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Independent Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) have given conditional support for the removal of fuel subsidy.
Recall that the minister of finance, budget and national planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, said recently that petrol subsidy will be removed before the expiration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s tenure on May 29, 2023.
She said the subsidy cost per litre of petrol ranges between N350 and N400 adding that Nigeria spends about N250 billion monthly on subsidy
“Right now the NNPC is the sole importer. It is imported and it is limited to an official price. So the subsidy per letter now ranges anything from N350, sometimes up to N400 per litre.
“The subsidy that government is carrying, just imagine what you can do with N250 billion per month because that’s the average cost per month to the nation,” she noted.
She said the implementation of the policy had been delayed because of the general election and the forthcoming national census.
“The fuel subsidy is one of those political economic decisions that you don’t want to have but you’re stuck with it anyway. But we’ve come to the point when almost everybody has agreed that this is really not serving the people that it is supposed to serve and the cost of it has become so high that it’s adding into our deficit.
“And right now, we have an approval…to exit subsidy by June 2023. Or at least I can say the Appropriation Act made provision that only allows subsidies up to June 2023,” she said.
Reacting to the plan to exit the fuel subsidy regime, the three organisations made a case for in-country refining of petrol as precondition to supporting the removal of fuel subsidy.
Particularly, the NLC and TUC said they would support petrol subsidy removal if the incoming administration takes steps towards the repair and revitalisation of the existing refineries.
They said they would oppose the subsidy removal and mobilise workers to protest against the decision should the government fail to take the necessary steps to alleviate the attendant effects of the plan.
The national treasurer of the NLC and president of the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), Mr. Hakeem said NLC remained oppose to the removal of fuel subsidy.
“We are opposed to the removal of fuel subsidy until the Nigerian government acts responsibly by fixing our moribund refineries,” he said.
Punch quoted Ambali to have called for the standardisation of private refineries.
“It is a shame that Nigerians are made to suffer for the incompetence of the government. We are the only oil producing country in the world that imports petroleum products; let the government license and serve as the regulator by standardising the operation of private refineries to service the domestic value chain,” he added.
For the vice president of TUC and president of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, Mr. Tommy Etim, the president-elect, Mr. Bola Tinubu has to ensure the smooth running of modular refineries across the country.
He said fuel subsidy is a scam as a scam adding the TUC’s resolution is for the refineries to work.
“The subsidy regime is a scam. I doubt if there is any subsidy to remove. Every day we wake up to new fuel prices and tariffs, so which subsidy are they talking about again? I think we have passed the level where we get shocked or get moved whenever we hear about the removal of any subsidy. Our advice to the incoming administration is for them not to hide under the shadow of any subsidy. We were made to believe that there was a subsidy. The solution now is for our refineries to work.
“The money used to service the so-called subsidy should be used to repair our moribund refineries. We have been kept in bondage. There is nothing else to excite us about subsidy. Let them repair the refineries and then the money used to service the so-called subsidy should be used to service other critical sectors. In the education sector for instance, a lot of issues need to be addressed. Similarly, we need to have a review of the minimum wage.
“So, when we say we don’t believe that the subsidy is still in existence, we are telling you what we believe. Fix the refineries and let us all move on,” he said.
For its part, IPMANsaid in a release by its spokesman, Mr. Chinedu Ukadike that with the government importing all the petrol consumed in the country, removing the over N3.5 trillion subsidy would expose Nigerians to arbitrary pricing.
Ukadike maintained that there has to be local refining before the subsidy could be removed.
He contended that refining in-country should be the government’s priority, stressing that any decision on petrol subsidy removal should be left for the incoming administration.
“IPMAN is in support that the outgoing administration…should not go into the removal of the subsidy as factors that would necessitate the removal of subsidy have not been put in place by the government.
“IPMAN also supports the position of Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) that our refineries should work and that our pipelines should be repaired in order to move petroleum products out of the coastal areas to the dry land closer to marketers that allow them load petroleum products as quickly as possible without having to move long distance.
“These are the factors that aid the movement to subsidy regime removal and if these factors are not in place, we will not be able to curb petrol importation and guard against exorbitant pricing,” he said.
