Protests continue against fuel price hike

Students staged street protests on Monday and Tuesday in the southwest Nigerian cities of Lagos, Akure and Ibadan ahead of a general strike called for Thursday by the unmbrella Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) to press the government into scrapping a fuel price hike imposed on 1 June. NLC President Adams Oshiomhole told reporters on Sunday that all workers are to ensure that "all petrol stations across the country are boycotted or shut down from operating until prices are reverted to the old rates", `The Guardian' reported. A think tank and NGO in Lagos, the Constitutional Rights Project, said it backed the union call and considered the hikes "inhuman and unacceptable". They are "an indication that the Obasanjo administration is clearly motivated by the morbid dictates of some western financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank who do not seem to take the interest and welfare of Nigerians into consideration," Samson Bako, CRP's research and publications officer, said. [See also separate story titled 'NIGERIA: IRIN Focus on the increase in fuel prices']