Even as the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) is fighting to correct the impression that it has thrown its weight behind government’s deregulation policy, one of its affiliates, the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) has vowed to oppose the policy.
The national president of the union, Alhaji Hamma Gidado said last week that Government’s proposed deregulation of the petroleum downstream sector of the oil and gas sector would be resisted by the union. According to him, the NURTW will join the organized labour to ensure that the controversial policy is frustrated.
Alhaji Gidado submitted that deregulation would cause hardship for the masses of the country; especially the poor.
“We are opposed to deregulation, and that was why at our last national executive council meeting, we agreed that if government wants to deregulate, we want to see good roads, steady power supply, availability of petroleum products and functional refineries”, he stressed.
He argued that deregulation can only mean price increase. “Today, if we accept the deregulation policy, the implication is that if you were buying a litre of petrol for instance at the rate of N90, may be it would soar to N200 or more”, he stated.
According to him, since government is always accusing a cartel, then it should go ahead and arrest members of the cartel which has been accused of causing artificial scarcity of petroleum products.
“If some bank chiefs and their Managing Directors could be punished, I see no reason why some officials of the NNPC should not be apprehended. We demand the names of the cartel for us to know who and who are cheating Nigerians,” the NURTW boss challenged.
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