Plan To Hike Fuel Price: Prepare For Long Battle, NLC Tells Jonathan

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday told President Goodluck Jonathan to be ready for another long-drawn battle with Nigerians if he failed to arrest the moves by functionaries in his administration to create “avoidable” labour and political crisis in the country.
The labour movement, while placing the workers under its platform on what it called “red alert”, also accused the president of trying to break up the Congress and impose a new regime of fuel price hike on the country.
Acting general secretary of NLC Comrade Owei Lakemfa, in a statement, noted that, the government was still angry over the last January anti subsidy protests and had thus fixed July 2012 as registration date of the proposed labour centre.
“They are hiding under this guise to register a new labour centre which they hope will support anti-people policies and cause distractions in the labour movement. These government agents have even fixed July 2012 as the registration date of their proposed new labour centre,” Comrade Lakemfa said.
He advised that the presidency view the January 9 to 16, 2012 strikes, mass rallies and street protests as a referendum by the people against a ruinous policy, and not as a defeat for which the administration was now seeking revenge.
Comrade Owei Lakemfa further lamented the polarisation moves against labour: “The hawks in government who see the NLC as being too powerful and capable of checkmating undemocratic and unpatriotic moves by the political class have come to the conclusion that the best way out was to engineer internal ‘disagreements’ in the NLC, and, hiding under this guise, is set to register a new labour centre.”
He continued: “The NLC advices the trade unionists who have enlisted for this anti-people project, and those being enticed to join them, to retrace their steps as the Congress will not allow the ranks of the working people to be split. The NLC and its allies put the working people on the alert for a struggle to stop this move.
“The NLC also calls on President Jonathan to stop his officials who are engaged in renewed campaigns to further increase the price of fuel under the guise of a nebulous deregulation policy which the House of Representatives has exposed as being fraudulent.”
Comrade Lakemfa wondered why government could be this desperate to support anti-people policies and cause distractions in the labour movement.
“These agents who are also responsible for the anti-labour bill currently before the National Assembly are myopic, as they do not realise that the NLC is a major buffer against any unconstitutional or anti-democratic bid for power in the country. They do not recognise the fact that, when the chips are down, it is the NLC and not the political parties that is capable of mobilising and getting tens of millions of Nigerians on the streets to defend our democratic project,” he stated.
Pointing at the serious security challenges in the country, Lakemfa warned the government to stop the unnecessary waste of public funds on media campaigns and Town Hall meetings, but instead use such funds to effectively tackle the security challenge threatening the peace of the country.
“With the serious security challenges in the country, the heating up of the polity by politicians and rising poverty in the land, the NLC calls on President Jonathan to call the agents of his government to order on the twin issues of trying to break up the NLC by fiat and increasing fuel price. These are unnecessary battles which the government cannot win,” he said.