NLC Urges PPPRA To Formulate New Petrol Pricing Template

As the Federal Govern
ment moves to implement new petroleum price modulation from January 2016, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called on the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) to formulate new petrol pricing template for the country in line with its statutory responsibility.
A statement issued by the NLC Secretary General,  Comrade Peter Ozo-Esoti in Abuja recently said PPPRA has the statutory responsibility to formulate the new petroleum pricing rather than the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, stressing that the union would resist such move by the government to fix the new pricing and removal of subsidy.
Ozo-Eson said it is ironic that those who vehemently opposed the previous administration’s attempt of subsidy removal by their tacit overt and covert support and encouragement of the massive protests against subsidy removal in 2012 are now preaching the inevitability of such subsidy removal.
The statement said “the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachikwu, first announced that come next year, the price of petrol would revert to N97 per litre and that subsidy would be phased out.  Two days after, he denied this and stated that what he said was that the price would operate within a band of N87 to N97 and that this did not mean removing subsidy.  The same minister now says that the price of petrol will now be N85 in January 2016 signifying the deregulation of the sector”.
The NLC statement further explained that “those vacillations and flips-slops are, in NLC view, designed to confuse Nigerians and pave the way for deregulation of petrol prices through the back door”.
The labour movement said Kachikwu had bypassed the PPPRA in its statutory responsibility, stressing that “by law, the board   of PPPRA is made up of stakeholders.  None of the contradictory prices the minister is throwing up is a product of the agency”.
NLC emphasised that any price unilaterally determined and announced by the minister is in violation of the law setting up the PPPRA as the agency has the statutory responsibility to examine and agree on a new pricing template based on the realities in the country today.
The labour union leadership urged the government to promote domestic refining before any contemplation of subsidy removal.  Stressing that as far as the nation continues to depend on purported refined products, deregulation and the abandonment of a subsidy scheme will unleash hardship on Nigerians.
The NLC statement restated its adopted opposition at the union’s central working committee emergency meeting of December 22, 2015 to the effect that any attempt by the government to increase the price of or remove subsidy on petrol would be resisted.
The union further reiterated that affiliate unions and state councils and other stakeholders have been directed to commence the process of mobilization prior to a meeting of the NLC National Executive Council (NEC) to be convened by January 2016.

Storie by
Philip Okparaji