The Nigeria Labour Congress NLC, has released six-points demand over the removal of fuel subsidy by the federal government.
This was contained in a statement seen by Kukukuru News on the official twitter handle of the union on Sunday where it called on the Citizens to join in protest and be part of the struggle for a better Nation on August 2, 2023 by 7:a.m at the Unity Fountain in Abuja.
According to it, the NLC said there is no where in the world where Governmment leaves its Citizens totally to the vagaries of the market without some measures of control and protection.
It said in the statement that the Federal Government should therefore deal decisively with the criminal content of subsidy instead of exposing ordinary Citizens to avoidable pain and hardship.
The statement reads in part that “as matter of urgent National importance, it is imperative to fix all our refineries to be able to cater for domestic fuel consumption.”
“Governmment should go after parties Associated with corruption, such as over invoicing, under delivery of products, over estimation of National capacity, crude oil swaps, smuggling and make them to account.”
“It continues, we are concerned that no Governmment acting reasonably leaves its national currency to forces of the market.”
“Governmment so-called merger of exchange rates even when it has nothing to export other than crude oil raise our debt stock N81 trillion from N72 trillion and put enormous pressure on local manufacturing capacity utilization.”
“It also impact negatively on the cost of locally produced goods and services as a lot of inputs are imported.”
“Finally, to address the raging revenue crisis, the Government needs to deal decisively with crude oil theft and tax the rich progressively. It is time for the rich to make sacrifices. The poor have done enough, there is nothing more to give.”
“We need to support poor and vulnerable Nigerians through structured and comprehensive social protection. There must be comprehensive Governmment support for Education and health sectors instead of commercializing them,” it said.
Other demands pointed out by the NLC include; “Immediate implementation in good faith of the resolutions with Congress jointly signed with Governmment and TUC, immediate reversal of all anti-poor policies of Government including the recent hike in PMS price, school fees and VAT, fix refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, release of witheld eight months salaries of University lecturers and workers, immediate inauguration of the Presidential steering committee and sub-committees as agreed in previous communications and to put a stop to inhumane action and policies of Government.”
