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Fuel hike: Reps move to empower NLC
INITIAL shock at Justice Roseline Ukeje's ruling barring the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) from going on strike over fuel price turned to anger among members of the House of Representatives immediately the prices soared. Many lawmakers construed the development as a confirmation of the war by the executive against the NLC over the pricing of petroleum products.
Said one of them: "There goes the only stumbling block to the executive on increasing the prices of petroleum products. The judgment came and pushed the NLC out of the way. The NLC is the only potent force against imminent dictatorship, against fuel price hike that will bring suffering to the people."
Resentment against the ruling and the subsequent fuel price increase was heightened considering that the House of Representatives was certain to tow the line of the Senate by deleting the "No Strike" clause in the Labour bill sent in by the Presidency.
Less than a month after the Senate scrapped a provision in the Trade Union (amendment) bill barring industrial strikes, Justice Ukeje ruled last week that general strikes are prohibited. And 48 hours after her ruling, petroleum products marketers adjusted pump price of fuel from N45 to N56 and N60 per litre, on government directive.
Hon. Ike Chinwo (Obio/Akpor, Rivers) said the lawmakers would not allow Labour to be denied the right to protest against the fuel price increment.
"We have not fully digested the contents of the ruling but what I know the House of Representatives will not do is to take away the right of Labour to go on strike. Nobody supported the idea during the debate on the Labour Bill and I am sure the ad hoc committee just constituted to work on it will not take away that right either. As for the increase in fuel prices, it is completely condemnable," he stated.
Most of the lawmakers were of the view that the executive teleguided the judicial process.
The Chairman of the House Committee on Judiciary, Bala Ib Na Allah said, as far as he was concerned the executive increased the price of petroleum products on the basis of the court ruling.
He said in voiding the office of the NLC President the judge gave a verdict, which neither the government nor the NLC prayed for.
Secondly, he said, the ruling appeared to have pre-empted the National Assembly by concretising or passing the two crucial provisions in the Labour Bill, which the lawmakers had resolved to kill.
Well-known to the legislature is the tug of war between the NLC and the Federal executive over the administration of fuel price regime in the country since year 2000. Oshiomhole and the NLC leadership are on record for having put clogs in the wheel of fuel price increment on four occasions since then and prevented government from going the whole hog with the increases.
The brawling over pricing and deregulation was still raging when the President sent in the Labour Bill providing for the proscription of the NLC, the end to its status as sole labour centre and outlawing of strikes.
According to Hon. Halim Agoda (Ethiope, Delta) chairman of the House Committee on Legislative Budget, timing was of utmost importance in the matters. Well-intended actions could be subjected to misconstruction.
"While at logger heads with labour, the bill to amend labour matters came. That's wrong-timing. While a judgment preventing labour from embarking on strike over government policy is hot in the air, fuel prices are increased. That's wrong-timing. It is more likely that people will be suspicious. Government should learn to gauge situations and moods of the people before embarking on any policy, which will affect their welfare," he said.
Hon. Usman Adamu Mohammed (Gaya/Abasu/Ajinga, Kano) points out another reason the public and the Representatives would suspect and accuse government of using the courts to hit labour below the belt and freely hike up the cost of fuel.
According to him, "systemic failure from bad leadership has made Nigerians suffer to the extent that they now see and read judgments given by courts as carrying certain vested interests."
However, not everyone in the National Assembly is seeing a correlation between the Labour Bill, the court ruling and the increase in the prices of petrol, kerosene and diesel.
Senator Gregory Ngaji (Cross River), says none of the three developments are linked. Much as this senator is unable to draw a direct link between the president's bill and the adjustment of pumps at the filling station last Thursday evening, he claims he's having nightmare over the imminent hardship the hike would unleash on the masses.
Senate Information Committee Chairman, T. Wada (Gombe South) could not trace a linkage either. Rather, he points out the manner the bill passed by the Senate synchronises with the ruling barring labour from strikes.
By Wada's explanation, the Ukeje ruling did not stop strike. Labour unions are still free to embark on industrial strikes, but on matters regarding industrial disputes like wages. What the court's decision of the last week prohibits is the penchant by the likes of the NLC for delving into matters which do not directly concern workers' terms of agreement and wage and declaring strikes on such grounds.
The ruling had gone the distance of determining and defining where, when and how a union should embark on strike. And disgruntlement with government policy on downstream petroleum sector is not inclusive as one of the conditions or circumstances for industrial strike.
"The judgment is saying that it is only when there is an industrial dispute that touches on the terms of the employment and employee vis-�-vis the obligations of the employer and his right, that a union can go on strike. A union cannot go on strike because of every government policy it does not support. If the members go on strike at the time, they will be doing so as an individuals or a conglomerate of civil society and not as a trade union", Wada explained.
In spite of the outcry over the increase in pump prices, many lawmakers saw it coming.
From the inception of the deregulation policy last October, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) had in times of price crisis analysed its predicament over its subsidies to marketers to the House Committee on Petroleum Refineries and Products Marketing.
During the may 2004 crisis, the Committee Chairman, Hon. Peter Laja Igbodor (Ogoja/Yalla, Cross River) told The Guardian that the NNPC was subsidising consumption in Nigeria to the tune of N17.74 per litre.
While the PPPRA proffered solutions and options, which included a fixed and manageable subsidy level, despite any increase in landing costs - the international price for crude oil was soaring astronomically.
By the month of August, the price per barrel of crude had hit $40 per barrel and the NNPC was subsidising at above N19 per litre.
The Guardian learnt that the corporation was in a dilemma as regards continued payment of salaries after the month of October.
The recent increase appears reflective of the probability that the NNPC has adopted one of the PPPRA's options of declaring the maximum level of subsidy it is capable of absorbing and sticking to it.
Federal lawmakers are however not moved by the argument that the NNPC could collapse under 'the heavy burden of subsidy' put at N480 million a day as of May.
"There is no justification for increasing the prices of commodities which are basic to the lives of the people. The ordinary citizen will bear the brunt and the suffering will be severe, complains Ngaji.
Usman dismisses the subsidy load theory as false. If he supports deregulation and free market and other like concepts of modern day international economics, he does want them applied without full consideration of political and socio-economic environment of the country wishing to adopt them.
Though most of the lawmakers support deregulation, they are baffled at its most visible and painful effects: recurrent hike in prices of products.
Mind-bogging to them also is the Federal Government's apparent blindness to stark absence in Nigeria of the welfarist structures existing in countries with completely deregulated petroleum sector.
"In adopting a policy you do not transplant," asserts Agoda. "For now, it is clear to all what the effects of deregulation will be. I mean side effects and the most conspicuous one is increase in the price of fuel, which will impact severely on everything else.
"It therefore, demands that for deregulation to go the whole hog and trigger price increase, government should put certain things in place. One of these things is to shore up the wages of the citizens to cushion the effects," he suggested.
In addition to this line of thought, the legislators appear to have chosen from the onset, to shut their minds to rationalisation on why the citizens of oil-yielding Nigeria should be subjected to price regimes similar to those of non oil producing countries.
In condemning the price increases, Chinwo disclosed to The Guardian that the Committee on Petroleum Resources to which he belongs had asked the NNPC to account for the 400,000 barrels it collects daily for domestic refining.
"We know that the refineries are not working, so what are they doing with the oil? Secondly, we must never forget that Nigeria produces oil and so whether or not there is deregulation, privatisation or anything else, Nigerians must be seen to be enjoying the benefits of producing this natural resource," Chinwo added.
The NNPC is yet to provide answers to the questions, though it had promised to send a written explanation and follow up later with physical appearance before the committee.
As justification for the increase, President Olusegun Obasanjo had argued that regulated prices are enjoyed only by a minority of Nigerian consumers residing in Lagos and Abuja while the majority dwelling in provincial towns and villages buy at inflated rates.
In response to this, Denge told newsmen over the weekend that the president was not in a better position to make such an observation on the grassroots more than the representatives of the people in the National Assembly.
Commending the NLC for abiding by the Rule of Law and moving on to appeal, Agoda reasoned that the quashing of the ruling would automatically restore Labour's right to protest through strikes as it had been doing under the circumstances.
"Until the new amendment bill is passed the old law remains in operation, he told The Guardian. He however stressed that his view was not an advocacy for strike as a solution to the current fuel problem.
Ngagi contended that strike might not necessarily be the best way out of the problem. He perceives dialogue as the most viable an option. "It was government who took up the prices and it is government that will reduce it," he asserted.
To avoid strike, Usman posits that the issue required the lawmakers to quietly negotiate the people out of the problem by linking up with the executive arm of government, the labour union and the marketers.
Usman's suggestion was not popular among some of his ANPP colleagues who said: "The PDP came to power by force and they are ruling by force. The requisite action is to find the instrument available to the legislature to reverse the increase."
However, Wada vowed that the Senate would give the development immediate consideration on resumption from oversight break and direct a reversal through "resolutions and orders appropriate to salvage the solution."
But such measure, he said would be taken on one condition: If the hike is proven to be the handiwork of profiteering marketers rather than the function of market forces at play.
Ibn Na'allah does however have a word of warning to his colleagues in the National Assembly who are eager to bail Nigerians and labour out of the quagmire.
He asserted at the weekend that his countrymen have a penchant for betraying messiah's rallying to their aid.
"Anybody fighting for Nigerians should do so with great caution. If you rise up tomorrow against Obasanjo you will discover the next day that the same Nigerians will collect N5,000 or N10,000 each and go to Aso Rock to pay him solidarity visit against your actions he said."
Ibn Na'allah blasted the NLC and recalled the solidarity visit by leaders of the people in Kano during the impeachment bid against President Obasanjo by the last House of Representatives led by Kano-born Alhaji Umar Ghali Na'abba.
"The most conspicuous action against the impeachment was staged by Oshiomhole and the NLC. The same NLC convened a press conference asking Nigerians to accept a presidential election result that international and local monitors had condemned on the same day as faulty and fraught with irregularities," he added.
The way out of the problem, according to Ibn Na'allah is for the emirs and Obas and Igwes and other royal fathers and community leaders to call back their representatives and give them signed and express orders to impeach the president.
"The constitution has prescribed roles for every arm of government. The House cannot go against the decision of competent court of law. It is the function of the executive to set prices for petroleum products. If Nigerians want the legislature to act, then let the constituencies call back their members and give them directives and sign that they stand by us and that we should go and impeach Obasanjo. They should do this and see if we will not go ahead with it,"`
We have not fully digested the contents of the ruling but what I know the House of Representatives will not do is to take away the right of Labour to go on strike. Nobody supported the idea during the debate on the Labour Bill and I am sure the ad hoc committee just constituted to work on it will not take away that right either. As for the increase in fuel prices, it is completely condemnable
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