NLC Set to shut down Nigeria January 1st Over Fuel Subsidy

  

The leadership of the Nigeria labour congress, NLC, in liaison with the civil society organizations, CSOs, are set for a show down in 2016 as the minister of state for petroleum resources Ibe Kachikwu have confirmed that the Federal government would remove subsidy and peg the price of fuel below N87 per litre, starting from January.

The NLC president Ayuba Wabba had on Tuesday December 22nd after rising form its emergency central working committee, CWC, meeting declared to vehemently oppose any step taken by President Muhammadu Buhari at removing subsidy, adding that the union’s position on subsidy remains unchanged.

    “Why must we continue to import and have subsidy in place? If we are not importing, by now, we should be paying lower. We remain consistent on those positions” Wabba declared.

However,  on Christmas day December 25th while inspecting facilities at the Port Harcourt refinery, Kachikwu confirmed that the government had finally scraped the Petroleum support fund (subsidy) insisting that with the current levels of government revenues it cannot continue to pay marketers subsidy.

Kachikwu who is also the Group managing director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, further stated that a new template would be made public by the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, in January.

    “It (new pricing regime) is out. I signed off on it yesterday (Thursday), i imagined that in the next couple of days the marketers would get advice on that. The nice thing about the PPPRA, where I signed up on it yesterday is that the price will be far below N87.

    “So for the first time, people will understand that the pricing modulation I was talking about is not a gimmick. It is for real. We have gone to find out how we will be able to fluctuate this market to reflect what the reality of the crude market is. The objective is that one, we cannot afford to continue to subsidise.

    “We can’t even understand where those subsidies were going to. There are a lot of fraud elements in it so we need to cut that off. The second is the earning capacity of the Federal Government is deteriorating by the day with lower prices of crude and come out more.

    “And maybe the first price that will come will reflect it. That was why Mr. President said that prices will be N87 for now. And that is what we have in mind,”

This is decision is coming barely 2 days after Buhari presented the 2016 budget to the National Assembly, where he stated that he had directed the PPPRA to adjust its pricing template to reflect competitive and market driven components.