NLC declares two-day warning strike over petrol subsidy removal

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has declared a two-day warning strike over the impact of petrol subsidy removal on the masses.

The strike is scheduled to commence on Tuesday, September 5.

Joe Ajaero, NLC president, made the declaration on Friday during a press briefing at the Labour House in Abuja, while speaking on the resolutions reached by the union’s national executive committee (NEC), during its meeting on Thursday.

The union is accusing the federal government of abandoning negotiations.

NLC also said the government has failed to implement some of the resolutions reached at previous meetings.

‘BITTER PILL TO SWALLOW’

During his inaugural address on May 29, President Bola Tinubu announced that the petrol subsidy regime was over.

The pronouncement immediately led to a hike in the pump price of petrol, a quadrupling of transportation costs in certain areas, and ballooning inflation across several market segments.

On August 2, the NLC and affiliate unions staged nationwide protests against the removal of the subsidy on petrol and the attendant hardship on Nigerians, after issuing a seven-day ultimatum to the federal government to reverse all “anti-poor” and “insensitive” policies.

After the protests, leaders of the labour unions met with President Tinubu at the State House in Abuja.

The president has however insisted that his economic reforms are bitter pills that the people must swallow at this time.

“We have gone through the past. I will not look back. The focus of my horse and my race remains forward-looking,” Tinubu told members of the board and management of the National Economic Summit Group (NESG) on Thursday.

The federal government has announced the distribution of palliatives to states in a bid to cushion the impact of the petrol subsidy removal on Nigerians.

The hardship and spiralling inflation are yet to abate, however.