 Following the indefinite suspension of the proposed plan by the federal government to remove fuel subsidy, labor leaders in Ogun state have urged the federal government to address corruption surrounding the petroleum sector of the country. State chairman of the Nigeria Labor Congress, NLC, Emmanuel Bankoli, said corruption in the country's petroleum sector is alarming, hence the need to urgently address it. He urged Nigerians to be vigilant, explaining that a Congress will not allow the government to further compound the current hardships Nigerians are facing. The public pricing let us produce what we consume, let our refinery work. It is only then we cannot sit down and talk. Again, we also said the government's surrounding petroleum marketing production in Nigeria is changing so many unethical practices, so many things that are going on in the petroleum sector that is not known to us. I said, look, the government's structure that we have is leading with corruption. And so we are saying, instead of removing a subsidy now, what you need to do first is to remove corruption that is surrounding petroleum sector. When you remove that corruption, you will be shown that you will not have any subsidy to remove. So it's one of our prayer and it's one of our request, our demand to them. So that is where we are. On the strength of government shelving the proposed increase, we are also shelving the protest. We continue to engage. The national leadership will continue to engage because it is not yet to hurry. Yes, they are putting it on hold, putting on hold to do what we are saying. The refinery must work. The refinery must work. We have no business importing refined products. Our refinery must work. We also must have more refinery so that we can produce what we consume locally. We want to go back to that story to take a look at Labour's stance in response to the position of the federal government. And I have joining us the NLC Deputy President, Amici Ashiguni. Good evening, Mr. Ashiguni. Good evening. Mr. Amici Ashiguni, it looks like I don't have... Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Good evening. So is Labour satisfied with the position of the government at the moment? I think by the grace of God, I would be glad to tell you that the proposed protest was intended to restrict federal government from implementing the policy of subsidy removal. And if that same federal government, having felt the impact of mobilisation of Congress and have decided to withdraw the policy unconditionally, I think it's a good place to also suspend the action because the intention has been met. But the... For us, it's victory. It's victory, but it is a suspension. Yes, it remains a suspension because you hardly can tell what happened tomorrow. So whatever we do is also a matter of check. So there's no way Labour can go to sleep, but rather to close their eyes and watch any similar policy or action that could also tend to do that same direction. So we certainly will resist. But for us, federal government has officially communicated to Labour that they have arbitrarily suspended unconditionally without any future date of such. And we also have to comply with the policy and the doctrine of Labour Parliament because we have strategies in our engagement. We are also gathered by international laws whereby the purpose in which you propose to go on a particular struggle is met. All you need to call members to tell them is victory as we record it. It's a fair big victory. All right. Well, Nigeria is the only nation that produces oil that relies on import, you know, for its domestic fuel consumption. How does that hit you in view of the fact that you are against the removal of subsidy? Yes, our position remains that the only means to remove subsidy is to see refineries work in Nigeria. And we believe that the best automation to give to government is to restrict them from towing a cheap method. Nigeria produced crude and the spot crude to also import finished product, losing employment, losing chances of development and also empowering our currency. That is an error. Economically it's wrong and it has to be corrected. So we believe that government should do everything humanly possible in ensuring that refineries must work in Nigeria and that we think is a matter of priority. NSC will continue to ensure that policies are engaged in such a way that it will facilitate activating refineries to promote and provide jobs because we can continue to complain of crimes when we are doing nothing to actually promote job creation. And the best way to create permanent job for people is to industrialize Nigeria and the area of PMS is a big factor. People are telling you they want to swap gas to PMS. That is laughable because the same thing will happen. Which gas are you transferring and how do you determine that in the market? That is a failure on arrival because what you couldn't do on PMS, that factor will certainly set in. Where you allow factor of demand and supply to drive a business, that should be locally produced and refined. So we are looking forward to seeing a direction of this domestic product being exported from Nigeria in such who have capacity to sell out and end income. Alright Nigerians have become so used to this drama that repeats itself from one era to another where we have labor versus government strike this threat and all of that and at the end of the day what we find most times is some sort of settlement. We do not find lasting solutions. For instance, almost every Nigerian knows that turnaround maintenance in this country is almost nice to zero. We hear of huge allocations but our refineries remain very, very nonproductive yet labor goes into action from time to time and is this not a repeat of history? The question should be that if not labor in Nigeria, what would have been the case of this nation? Just imagine what has happened today. Assuming there was no labor in Nigeria as a matter of an institution like Nigeria Labor Congress, if there was no NSE in Nigeria, what would have happened to this nation? A country whereby trade union is now the guiding instrument, the monitoring tool to government, to governance. It becomes sinful because when we refer to people gambling, turnaround maintenance, telling you cost of maintenance is higher than the expected income of why refineries you want. You see corruption also turning around the nation and people will tell you we want to stop subsidy, we want to promote a lot of competition to bring down the price. Where has it happened? In this country where you have not created the atmosphere that will allow investors to come in, where you have not allowed refineries to work under you as government? If government lacked capacity to put refineries to work, then who then should take that risk? Who do you put to risk to now go and import PMS from other countries in order to sell locally? What you know is price will steadily jack to 500 and people that will be penalized on that will be the ordinary people, the barbers, the tellers, and all the informal sectors who pay the price. And we believe that this issue of a circle corruption that continue to pull the eyes of Nigeria expectation must stop. I agree with you that history may repeat, but history we are talking about now is history of Nigeria Labor Congress being able to stop government from going ahead to implement anti-pupils policy because if this had happened as they proclaimed, don't forget the initial plan was to implement by next week, February 1st, that was not done. They shifted it to June and they still continue its mobilization and now they have suspended indefinitely, meaning that they have to create, they have to make provision for budget, for refineries, for subsidy. It's not, our interest is not to make provision for subsidy. Our interest is to make refineries work. It will remain a shameful act. It will be a baptism of shame until we make refineries, until we activate the finalists to create jobs we have not done much. All right, thank you. In such a nation, no economy drives in that nation. Well, thank you so much for your time, Mr. Amici Asuguni, NLC Deputy President for your time. Thank you. 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