Abuja. July 19, 2023: The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has condemned the N500 billion loan proposed by the Federal Government for palliative measure to cushion the effect of hike in the pump prices of petrol in the country.
Mr Joe Ajaero, NLC President said on Tuesday in Abuja in a statement entitled ”The Proposed Palliative Cash Transfers Robs the Poor and Pay the Rich: We Reject it”.
“NLC strongly condemns the decision of the Tinubu led administration to seek the approval of the National Assembly to obtain another tranche of external loans worth N500 billion from the World Bank.
“That is for the purposes of carrying out a phantom palliative measure to cushion the effect of its poorly thought-out hike in the prices of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).
“Remember that the 800 million dollars which was already proposed before the devaluation of the Naira by this government was worth about N400 billion then but is now worth about N650b after devaluation. It is from this, it proposes to bring out N500 billion for distribution,” he said.
He added that, the proposal to pay N8,000 to each of the so-called 12 million poorest Nigerian households for a period of six months insults our collective intelligence.
He also said this makes a mockery of NLC patience and abiding faith in social dialogue which the government may have alluded to albeit pretentiously.
The NLC president also said that the proposal to pay National Assembly members the sum of N70 billion and the Judiciary N36 billion was insensitive and reckless.
According to him, this is brazen diversion of our collective patrimony into the pockets of public officers whose sworn responsibility it is to protect our nation’s treasury.
“We believe that this may amount to hush money and outright bribery of the other arms of government to acquiesce the aberration.
“It is unconscionable that a government that has foisted so much hardship on the people within nearly two months of coming into office will make a proposal that clearly rewards the rich in public office to the detriment of the poor,.
“These proposals are not just unacceptable to Nigerian workers but are also dictatorial thus undemocratic.
“It is not a product of social dialogue which would have produced collectively negotiated outcomes by critical national stakeholders. ”he said.
Ajaero further said the actions of the federal government had shown that it does not have trust and confidence in the Presidential Committee, it set up to comprehensively look at the consequences of the Petroleum Product price hike.
He said that the Committee were also to make recommendations on the way forward to ameliorate its negative impacts upon the citizenry.
“What this means is that the government may actually not be interested in the work of the Committee and may have used it as a window to pretend to Nigerians that it is taking steps towards dealing with the consequences of its policies.
“We do not understand why the federal government would seek to undermine itself as its action suggests,” he said.
He however, reiterated that NLC does not have confidence in how the data for the never changing 12 million poorest households was generated.
He added that, neither do the NLC have confidence in the mechanisms being pursued for the distribution of the cash transfers.
“History of such transfers especially the school feeding programmes even while the children were at home due to COVID-19 pandemic and the Trader Moni saga fills Nigerians with trepidation.
“It reminded us of the continued heist of our collective resources by those in Public office,” he said.
He therefore added that the NLC would not want to continue to be part of the usual Charade of Committees with outcomes that are never implemented.
According to him, we would not want to waste the time of Nigerians especially workers on Committees that have already been programmed to fail thus ignored.
“We do not want to provide a cover for government to get away
with the hardship it has imposed on the people. We do not want to legitimize impunity.
“As a result, if the government does not want to stop these fortuitous actions that it is pursuing in the name of palliatives.
“We will be forced to constructively review our engagement with the government on this vexatious issue and take matters in our own hands,”Ajaero added.
