Ignore Proposed Labour Strike, IPMAN Tells Oil Marketers, As Mohammed Warns ‘Strike Action Will Bring More Hardship on Ordinary Nigerians’

The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria on Saturday asked its members to ignore the proposed industrial action as it also asked the labour leaders to jettison the planned strike, saying the deregulation of the oil sector was an inevitable decision with more merits for the majority of the people in future.

IPMAN’s spokesperson, Yakubu Suleiman, said in a statement in Abuja, “Members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria across the country have therefore been directed to ignore the directive by the NLC.

“The National Executive Council of IPMAN wants to inform the general public that IPMAN will not be part of the strike the NLC is calling, since our association is not part of the NLC.”

READ ALSO: Strike: Be At Work on Monday, Head of Service Tells Workers

Also speaking at a meeting with online publishers in Lagos, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said that the government was appealing to the organised labour to shelve the strike because it would “only bring more hardship on ordinary Nigerians.”

He explained that the increase in the price of fuel would benefit Nigerians in the long run.

He added, “Ordinary citizens are not the beneficiaries of the subsidy on petroleum products that has lasted for years. Between 2006 and 2019, a total of N10.4tn was spent on fuel subsidy, most of which went to fat cats who either collected subsidy for products they didn’t import or diverted the products to neighbouring countries, where prices are much higher.

“I want to assure Nigerians, through you, gentlemen of the press, that the government is not insensitive to their plight. As a matter of fact, the full deregulation of the petroleum sector and the service-based electricity tariff adjustment will in the long run benefit the ordinary people.”

Mohammed also added that it would be grossly irresponsible for the government to continue to borrow to subsidise electricity tariffs especially when the sector had been privatised.