By John Ikani
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) council of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) has directed market women, students and other professional bodies to come out en masse to protest against the planned increase in price of petroleum products from N162 per litre to N304 per litre.
Making the call during a mobilisation meeting with civil society organisations, Chairman of NLC in FCT, Comrade Alhassan Yakub, described the policies as “obnoxious, satanic and anti-people”.
According to him, workers and her civil society allies across the 36 states of the federation would kick start the protest from 27th, January 2022, while that of Abuja which is the grand finale would hold on February 2, 2022.
“We urge Nigerians to support the activities of NLC and civil society organisations for the forthcoming protest rally against federal government’s planned increase in price of PMS from N162 to N304.
“This is to sensitise Nigerians that these policies are obnoxious. These policies are anti-people. These policies are satanic. Therefore, we need to resist it with all our power to make sure that it doesn’t come to pass and Nigerians are not taken for granted.”
Speaking on the hardship the policy would bring on Nigerians, Comrade Alhassan said most state governments are not able to pay the N30.000 minimum wage signed into law in 2019, warning that further increase in petroleum products would lead to more hardship for workers and Nigerians.
“You can imagine as workers that it took a lot of persuasions to even get the 30,000 minimum wage which was signed into law in 2019, but most states as we speak today have not implemented and now you want to increase that hardship by increasing the pump price of PMS which will cascade into other hardships.
“Virtually everything is tied to this petroleum products Therefore, we said no to this kind of situations and so we are going to mobilise Nigerians in millions across the 36 of the Federation and the FCT to rise against this kind of obnoxious policies.
“So we call on Nigerians, those in the market, those in schools to come out on the 27th January 2022 across 36 states of the federation and on the 2nd of February 2022 in Abuja for grand finale to match against these policies so that the government does not take us for a ride.”
