If the suffering of the masses is the real reason behind the planned fuel subsidy strike by the Peter Obi endorsing Nigerian Labour Congress, why did they not go on strike when the masses were suffering over the Naira redesign, even when the Buhari government did not give in to their demands for reversal of the policy? Why did they not strike when university students sat at home for a year due to Buhari’s failure to meet ASUU’s demands? Calling for a strike a week after the swearing-in of the man who defeated the man you endorsed looks like sour grapes. This present NLC is too compromised with its links to Peter Obi to be objective.
Did President Tinubu think well before the “subsidy is gone” comment?
Here’s what ex-Edo governor Adams Oshiomhole says:
It is inaccurate, though not outrightly dishonest, for anyone to say the United States subsidises petrol, or gasoline as it is called. I first became a resident of the US at the age of nine in 1983. I am now forty-nine with a Masters’s in international finance Law. So I should have some idea of the US system.
What the US does, is more accurately described as incentivising petrol production by giving generous tax breaks for the domestic production of petrol (gasoline). This means US refinery owners have their taxes significantly reduced to incentivise them to produce fuel domestically.
The US also gives tax incentives to oil and gas firms to drill for oil and extract it.
Further incentives come at the state level, where gasoline is subject to lower sales taxes to keep the price affordable.
Direct payment of cash to oil producers, petrol refineries, and fuel importers, as fuel subsidy in America, is extremely rare, which is what we are doing in Nigeria. If the argument is for refineries and importers to pay less taxes, then I am all for that. What I am against is the payment of cash to them in the name of fuel subsidy.
Let us not compare apples to oranges because we may or may not like President Bola Tinubu. I have repeatedly said that due to his cartel links, I am not sure Tinubu is a fit and proper person for his current position.
However, the continuation of fuel subsidy is not killing Tinubu. It is killing Nigeria.
Peter Obi is on video saying he would IMMEDIATELY remove subsidy. And the Nigerian Labour Congress endorsed him. Now, they want to go on strike? I am not sure fuel subsidy is the real reason for their proposed strike.
In England, labour unions cannot go on strike unless they first hold a poll amongst their members and the majority vote in favour of industrial action. We need that in Nigeria so that a politically partisan Nigerian Labour Congress leadership that endorsed and campaigned for Peter Obi cannot dictate its will over Nigerian workers and hoodwink them into going on strike to support a partisan political idea, passed off as a patriotic nationalist policy.
