PRESS RELEASE: DELCOF JOINS VOICE WITH NUJ AND NLC ON PETROL PRICE REVERSAL

PRESS RELEASE: DELCOF JOINS VOICE WITH NUJ AND NLC ON PETROL PRICE REVERSAL

The Delta State Civil Society Organizational forum, a coalition of over 250 non-state actors and Civil Society organizations in Delta State have expressed serious concern on the further hike in price of petroleum motor spirit from N540 to N617/liter, stressing that it was totally inhumane and unpatriotic.

Dr Agboro. Chairman of the Forum said, Despite the hardship and suffering of citizens, with the astronomical increase in the prices of petroleum products and high inflation inflated on Nigerians as a result of the original hike on May 29 which was a part of President Tinubu’s inaugural gift, there is still an increase in premium motor spirit to further cripple the common man to make him more miserable.

It looks like a feeling that some people in power are bent on treating the citizens as a conquered people and can treat them anyhow they like without repercussions, this demonstrates why it takes them  pleasure to inflict pains and sorrow on the people. “We strongly condemn this latest unilateral increase and advice the government to desist from trying the patience of Nigerians. It is an attempt to rob the masses to pay the rich.

“An 18 percent increase in the price of fuel at this time of great difficulties for our people is sadistic and totally unacceptable. DELCOF consider this, insensitive, horrendous and smirks of a triumphalism by this government against the masses of this country.

This development has triggered a geometric increase in goods and services, with prices of food items soaring almost beyond the reach of many citizens. Frustrations, anger and fears have gripped many Nigerians over the sudden and persistent increases in the price of petrol in the country as queues returned to fuel stations, yesterday. The development which caught many unaware saw many petrol stations which were already opened for business and attending to customers hurriedly changed their meters’ readings to reflect the new price, while others shut down their outlets.

How can a right thinking human being advice 200Million Nigerians, an oil producing nation to welcome the development saying that it is the only way to go. For us the increment is an “insults to our collective intelligence.”

Also the proposal to pay N8,000 to each of the so-called 12 million poorest Nigerian households for a period of six months makes a mockery of our patience and abiding faith in social dialogue which the government may have alluded to albeit pretentiously. “If the government does not want to stop these fortuitous actions that it is pursuing in the name of palliatives, we will join forces with relevant stakeholders and organs to take collective action

We are abutted by the fact that the government does not adopt any social dialogue measures with relevant organs before taking certain decisions that bother on the welfare and well-being of Nigerians in a democratic dispensation. The government also obtain fresh loan of N500bn from the worldbank which supposed to be used as “palliatives for the poor and vulnerable,” end up in the pocket of members of the National Assembly and Judiciary.

DELCOF also joins her voice with the NLC to stalwartly condemn the decision of the Tinubu-led administration to seek the approval of the National Assembly to obtain another tranche of external loans worth N500b from the World Bank 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.

The further proposal to pay National Assembly members the sum of N70b and the Judiciary N36b is the most insensitive, reckless, and brazen diversion of our collective patrimony into the pockets of public officers whose sworn responsibility 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 at the detriment of the poor. What this means all this is that the government is seeking ways of robbing the very poor Nigerians so that the rich can become richer.

There is no other way to explain the proposal to pay a misery sum of N8,000 Naira to each of the mysterious poorest 12 million  Households for six months which amounts to N48,000 and pays just 469 National Legislators have N70b or about N149m each, while the Judiciary has about 72 Appeal Court Judges, 33 National Industrial Court Judges, 75 Federal High Court Judges and 21 Supreme Court Judges and a total of about 201 Judges receive a total of N35b or N174m each. If these other two arms are projected to receive this, what members of the Executive Council will receive is better left to be imagine by Nigerians, perhaps, the balance of N150b will go to them.

These proposals are not just unacceptable to Nigerians but are also dictatorial and thus undemocratic. It is not a product of social dialogue which would have produced collectively negotiated outcomes by critical national stakeholders.

We reiterate that we do not have confidence in how the data for the never changing 12m poorest households was generated; neither do we have confidence in the mechanisms being pursued for the distribution of the cash transfers. The history of such transfers, especially the school feeding programmes even while the children were at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Trader Moni saga, fills Nigerians with trepidation reminding us of the continued heist of our collective resources by those in Public office

DELCOF is also joins voice with the NUJ and the Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC)  to reject the hike in Price of Petroleum Motor Spirit announced by the NNPLC, for us it's provocative and designed to worsen the poverty level and hardship Nigerians are passing through. What the government has done is capable of pushing Nigerian people to the edge of the precipice and can trigger a raging fire that may overwhelm whatsoever mechanisms the government thinks it has put in place as safeguards.”

While we applaud the decision to remove the costly subsidy on fuel, we caution against hasty implementation of the policy without putting mitigating measures in place to cushion the excruciating effects, we therefore call on the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to “Stop the ugly drift” and come to the aid of the suffering populace.

We are not only surprise but saddened by the fact that most people can hardly commute to work or other places of business without too much stress because the embarrassing sudden gush in petrol prices has made it so. We believe that this sudden pronouncement is an over kill and advise fuel marketers to desist from anything that qualifies as economic sabotage of the people which could further catalyze other security issues such as burglary, robbery, kidnapping and other social vices in the country.

We urge the relevant organs and stakeholders to take stern measures to save citizens and home from wicked men of the under-world.

A responsible government should care  for her citizens, we will resist this economic sabotage by every legal means possible. We cannot continue to allow extortion of citizens in whatever guise, advising that “a word is enough for the wise.”

We also urge the citizens to go about their daily activities peacefully and avoid any rancorous situation.