By Felix Onuah
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian unions on Thursday called off a
general strike which had jeopardized oil supplies from the
world's seventh largest exporter for four days, but threatened
more action within weeks unless the government cut fuel prices.
The strike paralyzed most businesses, including public
transport, across the country but failed to harm the crucial
oil industry which earns over 90 percent of Nigeria's hard
currency.
"We have decided to suspend this strike," Adams Oshiomhole,
president of the umbrella union body the Nigeria Labour
Congress (NLC), told reporters in the capital Abuja.
Oshiomhole said the strike would officially end at midnight
on Thursday, and that unions would hold talks with the
government over the next two weeks before deciding whether to
take more industrial action.
The unions are demanding the government reverse a recent 20
percent hike in fuel prices to 53 naira (40 cents) per litre.
The price increases have been caused by the deregulation of
the domestic fuel market and phasing out of subsidies, a key
part of President Olusegun Obasanjo's economic reform package.
Unions say the increases have stoked inflation in Africa's
most populous nation and have helped impoverish Nigerians, two
thirds of whom live on less than a dollar a day.
They say the government has to import $2 billion worth of
gasoline a year because of the shambolic state of the country's
four refineries, which they say are kept in disrepair by state
oil executives benefiting from lucrative fuel import contracts.
The NLC has become the most powerful political opposition
to Obasanjo since he took office in 1999, returning Nigeria to
civilian rule after 15 years of military dictatorship.
Obasanjo has tabled a new labor law which could eliminate
the NLC's official monopoly as the umbrella union, and allow
individual unions to choose their alliances freely.
Oil companies said the strike did not disrupt Nigeria's 2.3
million barrel per day output, but industry analysts say any
future total strikes could affect oil production.
Concern that an extended strike could affect Nigerian oil
supplies helped drive world prices to record levels above $54
per barrel in New York earlier in the week.
Last month a Nigerian court ruled that the NLC, which has
already called four other general strikes over fuel prices in
the past year, did not have the right to strike over matters
unrelated to working conditions.
Nigeria's unions and rights activists accuse Obasanjo, who
was military ruler of the country from 1976 to 1979, of
presiding over a "civilian dictatorship."
