Organised labour on Friday threatened to embark on strike if the ongoing fuel shortage ravaging the nation spills into the next year.
A press statement issued on Friday also commended the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, for instructing the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream) to suspend its recess and immediately convene industry stakeholders meeting towards ending the ongoing fuel crisis.
A NEC member of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Issa Aremu, observed in Kaduna on Thursday that the protracted fuel crisis was a reflection of crisis of corporate governance in the petroleum sector.
Aremu said the bane of downstream sector was an awful absence of accountability, transparency and openness in the administration of the petroleum resources of Nigeria.
He said only the parliament can make a difference in “exposing the rot” in the sector.
Mr. Aremu said the labour leader urged the legislators to demand for “consequences for the actions and inactions of petroleum sector operators in the product shortage scam”.
“There is a deep-seated conflict of interest in the downstream sector; regulators are operators, regulators are importers, importers are products hoarders, regulators are also saboteurs, definitely we have a sector capture in our hands, Nigeria and Nigerians need liberation.”
Mr. Aremu however added that if the intervention of the legislature fails to terminate product shortages, labour may compel all Nigerians to return to street protests like in the past “to force the ruling elite to face up to the challenges of governance of the most populous promising but badly governed country in the continent.”
“The lengthy fuel scarcity has further worsened poverty, put productivity on hold. We dare not enter 2018, new year with this recurring old mess,” he said.
