National Daily

Rising cost of diesel and kerosene: Nigerians indict unions

•Urge extension of N50 kerosene

FEELING dissatisfied over rising cost of diesel and kerosene, Nigerians have blamed leaderships of Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), saying “they have not represented us enough.
A cross section of the people that spoke to National Daily over the issue, lamented that the TUC and NLC did not represent Nigerians enough during the struggle for reversal of petroleum products in 2007.

According to Mrs. Funke Olaniran-Faleru, a retired teacher, and Mr. Agbaje Olufemi, a commercial driver along Ikeja/Secretariat route stated “instead of the trade unions to tackle FG over the three main petroleum products being used in the country, they only concentrated on reversal of petrol alone.

“We noticed that labour unions laid more emphasis on petrol when they urged President Umaru Yar'Adua to revert to old price of petroleum products in May last year. to revert to the old prices of petroleum products. Because of that, President Umaru Yar'Adua only stamped what they demanded for and reversed petrol to N70. If the labour unions have insisted on the reversal of the other two (diesel and kerosene), I believe that Yar'Adua would have reversed both together with petrol.”
“Prior to the time that President Olusegun Obasanjo increased the price before he left office in May 29, 2007, a litre of kerosene was between N40 and N45, but now a litre of kerosene is between N80 and N95, yet our labour unions did as if they were not aware of the increases, until a litre of diesel has gone up N120 and N145. I beg our labour leaders to rescue us from the rising cost of petroleum products.”

However in a swift reaction, the Senior Assistant General Secretary of Trade Union Congress (TUC), Daniel Uhumangho, explained that labour unions did not pick and dialogue on fuel alone.

TUC also commended President Umaru Yar'Adua for elongating the period of increase of price of petroleum products to January 2009, a move which many said was only postponing the evil days by Yar'Adua.

“In view of the non-availability of electricity across the country, many people are resorting to the use of kerosene for their lantern. I believe for government to make Nigerians to enjoy the dividends of democracy, prices of commodities must be made affordable to them.”

In related development, consumers have appealed to the Federal Government to extend the N50 kerosene being sold by African Petroleum (AP) to other stations to enable Nigerians get the product more easily saying “if actually government is ready to address the problem of rising cost of kerosene, then, mandating just one filling station to import and sell the product at the price will not be enough.”

Investigations by National Daily showed that though AP has started the sale of kerosene at N50, the queue of consumers in the station across the Lagos State has continued to grow longer on daily basis.