The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has urged the federal government to restore petrol prices to their June 2023 levels.
The union’s appeal comes after the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited raised fuel prices recently.
Before President Bola Tinubu removed the petrol subsidy on May 29, 2023, fuel was priced between N195 and N238 per litre throughout the country.
However, the most recent revisions have resulted in petrol prices rising to N998 per litre in Lagos and N1,003 per litre in Abuja.
The Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN) ascribed the price increase to the difficulty of importing the product.
This hike has sparked criticism, with the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines, and Agriculture (NACCIMA) warning that it could worsen inflation.
At a news conference in Abuja on Thursday, TUC President Festus Osifo urged the government to assist by providing foreign exchange support to the Dangote refinery to address the sector’s problems.
Osifo said:
“We want the price of the product to go below what it was before; not just reverse to what it was before but to go below.”
He emphasised the need for the government to offer foreign exchange to Dangote refinery at $1/N1,000 rather than the current rate of over $1/N1,600 to effectively reduce petrol prices.
“The solution we are proposing, if implemented, will take us to the price we had as of June last year,” he added.
Osifo emphasised that no government in the world neglects its key industries and that the federal government should not subject the oil sector to the “vagaries and gyrations of our naira.”
Osifo also urged the government to grant licenses to independent marketers in the country.
“We want the Federal Government, through the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), to give all marketers licenses to lift petrol from the Dangote Refinery,” he said.
The TUC president noted that if the availability of petrol is compromised, it will pose a significant problem to many Nigerians.
“If, for example, the production from Dangote Refinery is less than 15 million litres per day, it is not sufficient,” Osifo said.
“So, while efforts are being made to ramp up production from Dangote Refinery, what we are demanding is that we should look for every other means as we are ramping up production.
“We should source for that difference and bring it in for a while until Dangote can get to that level where the production is sufficient to get to all nooks and crannies of Nigeria.
“For us, that is key because it will address the issue of availability.”