click herealso click hereThe Nigeria Labour
Congress, NLC, has threatened it would embark on industrial action if
the petrol scarcity biting the country persists into the New Year.
NLC gave the threat in a statement issued on Friday, December 29.
Protest against PMS price hike in Abuja
The statement however lauded the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki,
for directing the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources (Downstream)
to cut short its recess and immediately convene industry stakeholders
meeting to tackle the petrol crisis.
However, a member of Nigeria Labour Congress, Issa Aremu said the
problems of the downstream sector that have led to the petrol crisis in
the country exposes what he described as “crisis of corporate governance
in the petroleum sector.”
According to him, the downstream sector has a problem of “abysmal
absence of accountability, transparency and openness in the
administration of the petroleum resources of Nigeria.”
He said only the legislature can bring an end to the crisis in the
sector, adding that by directing the senate committee members to resume
duty and tackle the crisis, the Senate had shown that the legislature is
truly “a vent for public grievances, a “useful organ of public
opinion.”
He said “there is a deep-seated conflict of interest in the downstream
sector. Regulators are operators; regulators are importers; importers
are products hoarders, regulators are also saboteurs.”
“Definitely, we have a sector captured in our hands, Nigeria and
Nigerians need liberation.”
Aremu also called for a “total ban on importation to reinvent domestic
refineries and beneficiation to crude oil,” alleging that the “NNPC is
the only public corporation that annually awards its directors long
service incentives for no service at all, for non-functioning
refineries.”
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Petroleum Resources
(Downstream), Kabiru Marafa, had disclosed that following the directive
of the Senate President, the committee has summoned the Minister of
State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, Group Managing Director of the NNPC,
Maikanti Baru and other relevant stakeholders in the petroleum sector to
a crucial meeting on Thursday January 4, 2018.
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