MSA COMMEND THE NLC and the TUC IN RESISTING UNTOLD HARDSHIP ON THE WORKING MASSES BY THE TINUBU REGIME

LABOUR LEADERS MUST MOBILSE WORKERS TO RESIST ALL ANTI PEOPLE POLICIES

June 3, 2023.

PRESS STATEMENT

The Movement for a Socialist Alternative MSA commend the leadership of the trade union centres for resisting the outrageous hike in the prices of petrol by the Tinubu government. All the corrupt capitalist government of the PDP and the APC have always hide under the guise of subsidy removal to increase fuel price in the country. These increments have always push inflation of goods and services up causing untold hardship to the ordinary masses of the country.

The MSA support the strike action declared by the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC and the Trade Union Congress TUC as this is needed to call on the Nigerian working masses to resist the neoliberal attack of this regime. The neoliberal corrupt capitalist programmes of successive government right from the Obasanjo era have all failed to address the major reason of the emergence of “subsidy” which is their failure to ensure that the country’s four refineries are functioning.

In March 2021, the Federal Executive Council (FEC), presided by President Buhari, approved the sum of $1.5 billion (about ₦600 billion as of then) for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery. At that period, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Timipre Silva, told Nigerians the contractor, which was an Italian company, Tecnimont SPA, who, according to the Minister, are experts in refinery maintenance and assured the country that the refinery would start operating the first Quarter of 2023. Already in the second Quarter, the refinery is yet to start production. 

Refineries in Nigeria have gone through a series of rehabilitation and tune-around maintenance with a huge amount of money devoted to it, but nothing meaningful has come out of it. According to a report by the Guardian Newspaper of March 18, 2021,” It would be recalled that Nigeria has spent about $25 billion in turnaround maintenance of refineries in the past 25 years.

The capitalist policies of this government and the government before it have plunged the economy into this political and economic uncertainty. The elites have failed to invest the resources made from the economy to develop the infrastructure or fund vital sectors of the economy. Rather, it has continued its jumbo pay and allowances to the ruling elites making politics a lucrative business. 

A genuine workers’ alternative organised under a political platform is, at this moment, crucial to rescue this country from the hands of corrupt capitalist policies. Workers should start to advocate the nationalisation of the commanding sector of the economy under democratic control and management by the working people of this country. This is the pathway to check corruption and wasteful spending as well as invest the resources of this country to develop the country.