Fix Refineries, Wait For Dangote Fuel Before Subsidy Removal, NUPENG Tells Tinubu

The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) has congratulated Nigeria’s new President, Bola Tinubu and Vice-President, Kashim Shettima on their inauguration and swearing-in, while tasking them to hit the ground running.

The union charged the new leaders to fix the nation’s refineries amongst other challenges.

The union in the congratulatory message signed by its President and General Secretary, Williams Akporeha and Afolabi Olawole, urged Tinubu to make the nation’s public refineries functional and to address other daunting challenges in the Oil and Gas industry, including fuel subsidy, insecurity and oil theft and strict adherence to the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) among others.

The statement read: “Without any doubt, a major socio-economic policy on the front burner of national discourse and expectation is the recurrent debate for the removal of subsidy from the Petroleum Motor Spirit.

“As a responsible and responsive Trade Union in the industry, we are very desirous of policy change on the issue of subsidy, but we are deeply concerned of the failure of the successive administration to do the needful as severally advised and canvassed for by organized labor in order to avoid unintended consequences on the people and the body polity.”

The NUPENG leaders said that the union was delighted that the recently commissioned Dangote Refinery was addressing the concern of dependence on fuel importation, but advised that the new administration should not rush into taking any decision on the policy change until the products hit the market.

The union however noted, “In same vein the in-coming administration should make all three public refineries (Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna) functional and should not because of the anticipatory products availability from Dangote refinery allow the funds injected into the rehabilitation of these refineries waste.”

It stated that concrete efforts should be geared towards making them functional to operate in full capacities to generate returns on the investments.

“It has always been our firm belief that deregulation that is based on local production will not only increase the revenue earnings of the country, but it will also generate employment and make life more meaningful to ordinary Nigerians,” the statement expressed.

It further suggested that the new administration should have robust engagement and discussion with all key stakeholders especially the organized Labor on ways and means to mitigate these consequences on employment, inflation and living conditions of the working people.