‘Unlike 2012, we lack support of opposition to protest fuel price hike’

Comrade Peters Adeyemi  is the deputy president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), in this interview  he  gave an insight into issues  impeding  its ongoing nationwide  strike declared last Wednesday. The government is saying that with the new price regime several companies are going into importation of petrol making for competition in the market that […]

Comrade Peters Adeyemi  is the deputy president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), in this interview  he  gave an insight into issues  impeding  its ongoing nationwide  strike declared last Wednesday.

The government is saying that with the new price regime several companies are going into importation of petrol making for competition in the market that will force down the price of PMS. What your position here?
Let me say it clearly that our leaders are always telling lies as far as this issue of removal of subsidy is concerned. This is not the first time our leaders have been telling us that when subsidy is removed, you liberalise, and the price of PMS will go down. But you know it has not happened.  This is a terrain that we passed prior to this time. It’s not new.
During  Obasanjo`s regime we had this situation 11 times. The question we should ask is, when will government end this issue of removal of subsidy?  Obasanjo did it 11 times before he left, then Jonathan and now Buhari has come to do it. So, if Buhari leaves, this removal of subsidy will still continue. We are saying it is all about telling lies and deceiving people. They say it is like you go into the telecom, but telecom is different from PMS. Mobile phone is something that if you like you can buy; if you like you can do away with it, but you can’t avoid petrol because petrol has to do with everything that happens in this country.
Since we had been in this struggle of subsidy removal,  price of petrol has not gone below the benchmark that government has fixed, rather it has been going up.  So, don’t let anybody deceive Nigerians today to say that so many people will import.  
The question to ask is that, even right now, there is problem of importation; where will they get the dollars to do this importation? You see, prior to this time,  even when we had these unstable prices, people selling over and above the regulated amount, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) was providing these marketers with dollars at a regulated amount but now you are  even saying  that that regulated price is not going to be there, CBN doesn’t even have the dollars to give to marketers so marketers  will now have to source for foreign exchange elsewhere. They use the word ‘secondary market’  and  by my own interpretation it means  ‘go  to black market, go anywhere’  and source for this money. 
So if you go to source  for this foreign currency anywhere, at any price and you  bring the products in,  then somebody will tell you that he is regulating the price. Does it make  sense? Because if you buy your dollar at N370, N380 or N400 to a dollar and you bring the commodity in, you have to sell to make profit. Then somebody will tell you that he is regulating the price. It doesn’t make sense.
What is the position of the NLC on the role played by the comrade governor of Edo State Adams Oshiomhole who is seen to be one of the leaders of labour?
Don’t let us confuse the role of the comrade governor now. Comrade governor is no longer in the NLC; he is now in government;  so I don’t want to confuse his role.  He is a governor and an APC member so he has to do what favours his party.
Don’t let us be sentimental about this issue. We say he is a labour man, he shouldn’t have played this role or that, but he didn’t go into this meeting with us as a labour leader. He was there as a government person, the party knows that he is going to be of value to them; he is on that job to do government’s work,  he didn’t go there to do our work. So don’t let us confuse these roles.  You can’t serve two masters at the same time as far as this matter is concerned Oshiomhole is negotiating for government.
Unlike 2012 experience when a mass action was conducted, this one is not as effective, what would you say is responsible?
There is nothing that is not effective.  In 2012, the mass people decided to queue behind the labour and the mass of the people say we betrayed them; that we didn’t drive the process to a conclusive end. So that doubt still subsists if we need to very honest with ourselves. 
Also, what we have now is different from what we had in 2012, because now we  have a situation where the majority of people who supported our struggle then in Lagos are all now in APC government and singing a different tune; we don’t have that advantage now.
The major opposition worked  with labour in driving that process, we don’t have that advantage now,  except we want to deceive ourselves;  and beyond that also you find out the NLC is the only one prosecuting this struggle, TUC is not here with us.
And then we have some of our colleagues who are also aggrieved and say they can’t be part of this process. So it will be naïve for us to compare this situation with 2012; there are a lot of things that were available in 2012 that are not available now.
Many believe that it would have been effective if civil servants had participated in this strike?
The civil servants are participating, but don’t also forget there are some categories of civil servants who are in TUC, so for as long as TUC says that they are not part of this struggle, it means that their members in the civil service or in the public service will have to go to work and that is part of the complications.
What can you say about the decision of your affiliates like TUC,  NUPENG, PENGASSAN, NURTW, and NUEE among others to pull out of the strike for a reversal in the price of petrol?
TUC is not our affiliate, it’s a labour centre on its own. NUEE as you aware, participated in our election and lost, PENGASSAN also is not our affiliate and NUPENG has consistently been invited by government as the union in the oil sector so they had been working with government on this issue for a long time so we can’t stop them. Don’t forget also that our affiliates have their rights as affiliates to decide what they want to do.