2016 Would Be A Very Turbulent Year, Says Odah

Immediate past General Secretary of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), John Odah, spoke to COLLINS OLAYINKA in Abuja on the petrol price modulation and the challenges that it poses to the survival of Nigerian workers next year.

Price modulation is nothing new at all; it is one of the terms the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank convinced the Nigerian government to use.

What is surprising to me is that President Muhammadu Buhari would allow the IMF and World Bank to determine his policy on a critical issue, such as price of petroleum products.

He came into power on a clear programme that could work for the ordinary people, who made his second coming to power possible. I am really surprised that he is allowing the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, to be going all over the place spreading the gospel of the IMF and World Bank.

However, what is clear to me is that Nigerian workers in the past had resisted this policy, whether it is Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) or the fuel price increases that the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration carried out.

I would be surprise if the present crop of labour leaders would allow this policy to go without giving it a fight.

So, I would say that if Buhari has decided to choose next year as the year to wage war against the poor Nigerian people who voted him to be President. It is not only tragic for this country, but it would also be a very turbulent year.
According to the new Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) policy, the price of petrol would actually reduce to N86.50 from N87 per litre. Is this reduction not going to alleviate the suffering of Nigerian?

What the PPPRA is doing now is very fraudulent. In any case, the various components of the PPPRA are not in place.

Recall that the PPPRA is a creation of the struggles of organised workers during the fuel increases. On the basis of that, the NLC, National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers (NUPENG), Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), road transport unions, amongst others are statutory members of the board of the PPPRA.

When I was the general secretary of the NLC, I served on the board, so I know how the system works. It is not for an Executive Secretary or the minister of State for Petroleum Resources to dish out what the template should be.

The figures that are in the public domain are figures that are wrongly calculated. I don’t know what the NLC and other unions that are statutory members of the board of the PPPRA would do, but the PPPRA should not be used to deceive Nigerians that they are doing something that is new. They are only trying to deceive Nigerians into accepting what they had refused over the years.

The clear demonstration of that was what happened in January 2012, when the whole nation rose in unison against foisting price increase on Nigerian people.

The PPPRA said the last time the template was reviewed was 2007. You were there as the representative of the NLC and did nothing to ensure the template reflected the price as close as possible at the time. It meant that the presence of labour on the board did not benefit the poor Nigerians. Why was it difficult to review the template then?

There were a lot of difficulties while I was there. It was during that period that a former chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ahmadu Ali, was the chairman of the board. We were always trying to engage him to break his stonewall because, the ruling government knew what it wanted to do.

What we discovered was that critical matters were no longer brought to the attention of the board, but were rather done behind the closed doors. That was how the sons of Ali and Alhaji Bamanga Tukur were among those that were given contracts to import petrol. This never came to the attention of the board.

I agree that having fought to have the PPPRA established, government was never at ease with the representatives of labour and other popular forces. Those that served on the board would testify to the fact that it was always a struggle to get the opinions of labour and others on board whenever we went for those meetings.

Our understating of what is presently going on is that government has refused to re-constitute the board to enable the minister of State have a field day to give instructions to civil servants to do old things that they tell us are new things.

I can say clearly that this so-called price modulation is from the briefing book of the World Bank and IMF. There is nothing new that we have not seen before.
On what basis would labour be calling its members out on protest after the price modulation took effect from yesterday, because the price has actually come down from N87 per litre to N86. 50 kobo?

I am a retired general secretary and do not speak for the NLC. My stand is that I would be surprised if the NLC allows the current efforts to blindfold Nigerians to go on without exposing this price modulation gimmick for what it is.

The President had emphatically made it clear in his last visit to the United States (US) that he does not believe there is any subsidy and that all those claiming there is subsidy are being fraudulent in the use of figures.

He also made the point that he believes that if the price of fuel were increased, majority of Nigerians would not be able to afford to live.

How would you reconcile the President stand in the US with the reality that there is no provision for subsidy in this year’s budget? What does this say about the President intention?

I am not unduly worried about the non-provision of subsidy in this year’s budget, because we know that the President can submit supplementary budget to cover what they have deliberately refused to put there.