End fuel smuggling, oil workers tell FG

According to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, the Federal Government, as well as companies operating in the downstream oil industry, are all responsible for the ongoing statewide shortage of premium motor spirit, or gasoline.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, big and independent oil marketers, depot owners, and other oil industry participants are among the downstream oil sector players.

The operators were searching for ways to raise the price of PMS, according to PENGASSAN, a significant union in the oil industry, but they emphasized that the union would resist this.

Festus Osifo, the union’s president, addressed the national executive council meeting of PENGASSAN on Thursday in Abuja in an effort to discuss the ramifications of the multiple difficulties that Nigeria and oil workers are currently facing.
The group also demanded that the Federal Government stop its “reckless borrowing” and rejected the proposed rise in the pay of parliamentarians and other politicians.

Speaking about the ongoing price increases and fuel shortages, Osifo said, “The persistent shortages of PMS across the country has become a source of pain for the Nigerian people as the current shortages are being perpetuated by players in the downstream sector in order to hike the price far above the government approved threshold.

“It is an added problem when non-state actors begin to arrogate to themselves the power to determine the price of a liter of fuel far above the rate pegged by the government in the current subsidy regime.

“It is more disturbing that the government is equally demonstrating a high level of culpability in the unwholesome situation by its silence and unwillingness to frontally and publicly address the harrowing experiences of Nigerians in the current situation because no concerned and responsive government will bury its head in the sands like the proverbial ostrich while the citizens are being brutally exploited.”

Osifo added, “We demand that the various security agencies, especially the men of Nigerian Customs Service and immigration charged with manning the nation’s borders, act professionally and in dictates to their oaths of allegiances to stop the high rate of smuggling of the products across the West African countries.

“The various depots and other storage facilities, especially those owned and operated by the NNPC, should be upgraded and made accessible to all operators to lift the product.

“Consequently, we demand an immediate end to the avoidable, unnecessary, crippling, and pain-inducing fuel shortages and unapproved price hikes across the country. No excuse is good enough to cripple the country.”

Osifo emphasized that “we have a government in authority to fix difficulties not to create excuses” and that “if there are challenges, they should be fixed.”

He declared that PENGASSAN was prepared and eager to work with the Federal Government and offer support in whatever way to meet the nation’s current issues.

“But we caution it not to take the Nigerian people for granted as it seems to be manifestly doing on various crucial national issues,” the PENGASSAN president stated.

The union noted that under the current administration, Nigeria has seen two recessions in just five years, with the workers and the poor people bearing the brunt of these economic downturns while the country’s economy remained weak on all fronts.

“Based on the above summations, we view the recent clamor by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission to increase the salaries and allowances of top public office holders as highly insensitive and an affront to the struggling masses and the working class,” Osifo stated.

He added, “The only group entitled to pay rise are the downtrodden Nigerian workers and at best Nigeria judges. The President, his Vice, governors, lawmakers, and other political appointees do not require a pay rise.

“The Economist of London already lists Nigeria’s lawmakers as the highest paid in the world. It is therefore provocative to consider increasing their pay packages without acceptable justification.”

He said PENGASSAN was also saddened by the continuous payment of pensions to ex-governors and their deputies even in states nearing insolvency.

“More painful is the fact that many states are not paying the N30, 000 national monthly minimum wages, whose implementation commenced in 2019,” the union’s president stated.

He added, “Pensioners in some states have not been paid for 75 months or more with backlogs of unpaid salaries, while others deduct workers’ pension contributions and fail to remit to the pension fund administrator which by law is a criminal offense.”

“PENGSSAN, therefore, demands the stoppage of pension to all political office holders and kill any idea of further increasing their salaries until they justify such increment by first putting the economy in a proper shape and lifting millions of Nigerians out of poverty.”

READ MORE: Nigerian experts now dominate Nigeria’s oil and gas industry- NCDMB

The government was urged by the oil workers to take economic and financial experts’ advice. It stated that experts have issued a warning that “debt servicing will devour over 100% of the Federal Government’s earnings in roughly a year or two if they (the government) maintain their reckless borrowing.”

It stated that this could only be avoided if quick action was taken to increase the country’s revenue base and reverse the escalating imbalance of the debt service-to-revenue ratio.

“The NASS ((National Assembly) we believe can still knock prudence into the 2023 Appropriation Bill, prune wastages, look deeply into service-wide vote and the recurrent expenditure, and then move all cash saved to increase capital spending.”

Source: punchng.com