A follow-up meeting has been scheduled between government representatives and TUC executives due to the mounting opposition to the Federal Government’s elimination of fuel subsidies last week.
The TUC is expected to present a number of demands that its members want the government to quickly comply to at the meeting, which is slated to begin at 4 pm today, Sunday, at the Chief of Staff Conference Hall within the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has already begun organizing for the strike scheduled for next Wednesday. Given that the organization’s members have passionately opposed the new fuel pricing pattern that the government recently announced, it is unclear whether the group will participate in today’s meeting.
- Advertisement -
The TUC is requesting that the Federal Government use the old template while talks with labor unions are still ongoing.
Festus Osifo, the president of the TUC, stated to media after the emergency National Executive Council (NEC) meeting on Friday in Abuja that the organization is not pleased with the Federal Government’s unilateral decision to withdraw fuel subsidies.
He claimed that the TUC expected the administration to have first sought out organized labor.
Osifo states: “Having noticed this, we wish to state that the NEC-in-session determined that talks with the Federal Government should proceed while asking that the government return to the pre-revolutionary status quo.
“Considering that we met with the administration on Wednesday, the status quo ante should be preserved while the dialogue is ongoing. They demanded to know our thoughts and the arguments we were making while also providing us with a list of everything they would do.
“We told them the things we want to submit, we won’t submit them now, but put them forward to our organs for discussion and seek their approval on the things we can submit,”
The TUC President meanwhile emphasized that the organization’s future course of action depends on how the government responds to its demands.
We’ll wait until Sunday, when we’ll meet with government representatives. The TUC will present its demands when we finish that meeting, and how they are met will determine our course of action moving forward, he had said.
The management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL) has maintained that the Federal Government is unable to continue subsidizing petroleum products for the nation since it owes it N2.8 trillion in debt.
Nigerians have been bemoaning their pain caused by petrol since President Bola Ahmed Tinubu declared that the era of fuel subsidies was ended.
