Union rejects offer to scale down price hike

Union leaders rejected a government offer to scale down a 50-percent fuel price hike as a crippling nationwide strike against the increases entered its second day on Friday, according to news reports.

The president of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), the nation's largest union, warned that the government's offer to cut prices by about one-sixth did not go far enough, AFP reported.

"We will not accept anything more than 20 naira for a litre of petrol," union leader Adams Oshiomhole told reporters.

The government's action last week pushed the price of petrol per litre from 20 naira (US $0.19) to 30 naira. Kerosene, used for domestic purposes, rose from 17 naira a litre to 27 naira (from $0.16 to $0.26).

In negotiations with the union the government offered to cut petrol from 30 naira to 25 naira per litre and kerosene from 27 naira to 17 naira kerosene.

The strike, which was accompanied by violent public demonstrations, is supported by students, some governors and the Senate. Traffic in the normally chaotic streets of the largest commercial city, Lagos, have been deserted except for street hoodlums who had earlier erected barricades to extort money from the few motorists still circulating. Domestic and international flights are being cancelled.

In a rare national broadcast on Thursday, Information Minister Jerry Gana appealed for public understanding, PANA reported. He said cancelling the price rise would plunge the nation back to the days of embarassingly long lines at petrol filling stations.

Although Nigeria is a major oil producer, four of its refineries are run down and unable to process the 300,000 barrels of crude oil reserved for daily domestic use. Imports have had to make up the shortfall and, Gana said, government could not sustain subsidies on these imports.